The update of Adams County’s emergency response plan is moving along nicely.

So said Civil Defense Director George Souderes this week. The Board of Supervisors planned to meet with Souderes in the coming days to, among other things, find out the plan’s status.

“There’s still some work to be done,” Souderes said. “We’ve got the basic plan, the meat of it.”

A study released in July, funded by the local United Way, found the county’s disaster plan was incompatible with state and federal plans, was outdated and needed to fill in some holes.

Soon after, Souderes said he, too, felt it needed updating but was waiting for guidelines to come from FEMA.

The guidelines arrived in August, and Souderes said he would start work on updating the plan.

This week, he said the plan was well on its way through the process.

“We’re going to meet sometime near the end of this month as soon as I arrange with the state and other agencies,” Souderes said.

“Everybody that has a part in the emergency support functions can sit down.”

Souderes said he would present a copy of the old support functions to those who might have a hand in disaster response.

“We’re going to say, ‘Y’all tell us what you can and can’t do,” he said.

“If they think it’s fine, we’ll keep it. If it needs to be added to or deleted, we’ll do that.”

The finalized plan will be put into electronic forms, and only a few hard copies will be printed up, he said.

“That’s what was recommended by the state office,” he said. “It’s cheaper on everybody.”

Those who want can print off their own paper copies, he said.

Souderes said he couldn’t say when the plan might be completed.

“It all depends on how much those agencies want us to make any changes in a particular emergency support function,” Souderes said.

“And you have to realize we do other things besides emergency management, like fire coordination and weather.”

Soon after the United Way-sponsored study, the city contemplated creating an emergency response plan of its own.

Since then, not much change in that direction has been made, Mayor Phillip West said.

“We had given some thought to that a while back about trying to see if we needed to develop our own plan,” West said.

“We haven’t had any real discussion on that.”

West said after Hurricane Katrina, some thought they needed to be better prepared if an event like that happened again.

But for now, they’re waiting to see what the updated county plan will look like, he said.

“We haven’t gotten any kind of report on it as to make a determination if we need to consider anything beyond what we already have and what we’re trying to do,” West said.