Mineral County Disaster Emergency Services coordinator steps down after 18 years on the job

Reaching retirement is like being a kid and getting the last bowl out of a box of sweet cereal. That last bowl has all the sugar that fell off the grainy nuggets and its super sweet. Retirement is enjoying the sugary rewards from a lifetime of dedication and hard work. Rewards like sipping a cup of coffee on a long summer morning, vacations that never end, and not having to take calls.

This is something not lost on George Gupton who is retiring from his job as the Mineral County Disaster Emergency Services coordinator. A position he has held for 18 years. It’s a salaried job with a small stipend of about $600 a month which is funded by the state. But it required him to respond when catastrophic emergencies arose and required him to be on-call seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

“Even when I’ve been back east visiting relatives I’ve been on call and have been on the phone coordinating events,” he said.

Now when he’s traveling with his wife, Liz, he can fully concentrate on the task at hand, which it to relax. The couple has three children, Gail, who lives in Superior, George who’s in Texas and a daughter, Petra, who is currently in the south of France.

“If there was a wreck at 2 or 4 o’clock in the morning, George was there doing his job,” said retired highway patrolman, Roman Zylawy, who currently is the chairman for the Mineral County commissioners.

The position is organized and funded by the state because it is required that every county has a DES coordinator explained Zylawy. The DES Coordinator is responsible for catastrophic events like forest fires, floods, and wrecks on the freeway.

“For example if a semi (truck) crashes on the freeway and there’s a spill that contains hazardous material, George responds to that. I remember when a fuel truck crashed on the St. Regis Bridge over the Clark Fork and the tank was laying on the railing and all the fuel was leaking directly into the river. George was the one who had to come out and pulled in the resources from the state on how to get the river cleaned up and stop the leak and all that,” Zylawy said.

Gupton was also the chair for the Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC) which created the County Emergency Response Plan, and Pre-response Mitigation Plan. The LEPC is a committee which brings together the county sheriff’s department, highway patrol, fire departments, and other emergency responders with monthly meetings. The committee provides guidance and resources to these county representatives to help them all come together if there’s a disaster and is mandated by the federal government.

“At first it was just a hazardous materials committee. But since all the emergency responders were meeting, they decided to expands its mission and make it an all hazards committee,” Gupton said.

Gupton is a tall, powerful man who stands firm and gives off a feeling of confidence. Something needed in a time of crisis. “He’s quiet, soft-spoken and methodical and so he’s good at not getting people riled up. Sometimes those agencies have type “A” personalities who want to lead the charge and so George has been good at maintaining things and keeping hot heads cool. He’s done a good job,” said Zylway.

Retired from the forest service before taking the DES position, Gupton said he’s “done a little bit of everything.” Including running a contracting business, he’s been a deputy for civil defense in the 70s, and started his career in the air force.

One of the worse disasters he dealt with was a hazardous material wreck on the west-end. It was July 13 around 2004 and a semi-trailer rolled over and the insulation was scraped off of it. The material the truck was carrying should not have gotten above 70 degrees and it was a hot day. “We had trouble getting it back upright and it was taking time to get people up here who knew how to unload the material,” he explained. “That was exciting and then this wind came up and blew trees all over the freeway causing more excitement. It was one of the busiest days I’ve had on the job.”

He and Liz plan on staying in Alberton and they own the Old School House located in Superior. Events are held there and it contains some businesses and they will continue to work on that building. As well as stay involved with some things in Alberton. But George said he’ll step away from the LEPC along with the DES position, “I would like to see someone else take it. I’ve been at it for a long time.”

He’s proud that the county has built a group of responders who made his job so easy, “we’ve been able to handle just about anything that came up and we didn’t need a lot of outside help. Our LEPC has worked well at keeping everyone acquainted and working together and understanding who is responsible for what, and kept things working smoothly together. I’m leaving the position with everything in a pretty even keel considering what the federal and state folks ask for, and require, is on the scale that’s designed for big cities and so getting the federal government to understand their demands and plans don’t always fit a county like ours. We do have budgetary constraints and can’t get everything. But we do manage pretty well with what we got. My philosophy has always been to do the best you can with what you’ve got.”

He’ll miss his coworkers, “but it’s something you need to move on from.”