For Hector Silva, life has always been helping others and serving in ways where he could make the biggest impact possible, from joining the military to now leading as director of Pulaski County Office of Emergency Services.
Silva was in the military when he first arrived in the Waynesville area, then he met his wife and started a family. He was medically retired in 2014.
“I lived in Puerto Rico for a long time, but I've been almost everywhere,” he said. “The Lord was the one that made me stay here. (When I retired) I didn’t have any major goals or plans, I just went with the flow. And then, I met my wife, and she’s from here. I wasn’t going to take her away from her family. So, when they ask me where I’m from, I’m from Missouri.”
He was working as a military police officer, something he’d always wanted to do, when he retired.
“I always wanted to be a cop, but growing up in Puerto Rico, that wasn’t a good option,” Silva said. “My dad always tried to steer me away from it. And then, I joined the military, and I was able to be a police officer.”
After retirement, he took a short break and then decided to pursue a master’s degree in human services.
Silva is a natural at working with others, and quickly became friends with leaders in the community, such as Waynesville Mayor Sean Wilson and former mayor Luge Hardman. He joined the Waynesville-St. Robert Chamber of Commerce, and many doors began to open.
While working on his degree, he sought an internship and reached out to other chamber members. He was offered an opportunity with the county health department by Melissa Sharp.
“I became infatuated with environmental health inspection,” he said. “They gave me an opportunity, and they gave me my full-time job, and I became the health inspector in 2020.”
As health inspector, he got to know the business owners in the area and his love for the community grew. He found many opportunities to offer ways to improve and educate to help make businesses better.
That job led him to be invited to work for the public health emergency response, which he said is like emergency management, but within the health department sector.
As he worked, he furthered his education through attending conferences to learn the most up-to-date information and techniques in the field, and he continues to do so with his current position.
Taking care of the community
“At the end of the day, it's not a job, it’s a responsibility,” he said, adding when he became director of the county’s emergency services, he saw it as the perfect opportunity to do what he loves, serving others. “I always felt this close link to the community. I don't know, maybe it's because I'm not from here, and I really wanted to prove myself, that I can be from here and I want to take care of my community.”
Silva said in his life decisions and path he takes, he “is never afraid.”
“I trusted the Lord,” Silva said. “He’s always had a way to put me in places where I would strive (to succeed) even when there were headaches and complications.”
Small team of volunteers
Silva said his office includes himself and his administrative assistant Charley Joe Kallman and area volunteers who are called into action when emergencies arise.
Silva and Kallman work full time in the office located in the Pulaski County Courthouse basement, and they’re keeping up with other emergency awareness organizations in the local area and state 24/7.
Silva usually knows days, if not a week or more ahead of time when weather conditions could lead to emergencies, including winter weather, flooding or the recent thunderstorms, wind and tornado activity.
Volunteers are always welcome to contact him for more information on the many ways to help.
Silva’s experience and continuing education plus constant training helps him lead and organize volunteer efforts, and to communicate well with other emergency services, such as fire, police and sheriff.
One of the most critical things Silva is in charge of during emergencies is opening a shelter at the courthouse in cases of extreme weather conditions and getting volunteers to help with those efforts.
Preparing the community
“We are all proactive instead of reactive,” Silva said, adding prior to the recent high winds and tornados that occurred on March 14 in Missouri, “we knew it was expected to get bad that night. We were ready. One of our main missions is to prepare, prepare and then mitigate, respond and recover. We continue to prepare on a daily basis. We’re preparing for the worst and preparing for how to make the community strong in the face of any adversity, any emergency, any disaster. One of those ways is preparing our staff.”
Emergency alert system
Silva recommends everyone in the county sign up for Hyper Reach alert system to get texts messages for emergency alert notifications.
“It allows me to alert people an event is about to impact the community,” Silva said. “but also have the capability of doing internal campaigns. I’ll send a message to my EOC staff saying that I’m activating at a certain level, and that we’re monitoring this weather, this storm, we’re activating EOC and if you’re around, please be on standby. At that point, I’m requiring at least most of my staff, because at that point, the incident has grown in proportion, and the need for supporting the local emergency services is actually there, and at some point, they come in. And it’s all through Hyper Reach.”
Silva monitors and is in constant watch of National Weather Service alerts and keeps in constant communication with weather and emergency management personnel and trusted professionals across the state and other states, as well, giving him an “educational curve” on what’s heading our way and what to expect.
Night of the storm
“Trusted professionals keep us aware of what's happening,” he said. “So, we were ready. We knew that there was a storm coming. Usually, I know two weeks out that something may be coming. We wait until five days before, and at that point we're coordinating.”
On March 14, “The day started with us being ready,” he said. Silva was in communication with others around the county.
“We’re already coordinating resources, not necessarily allocating the resource, but coordinating the need for your resource, in case it gets severe,” he said. “This is what we do. This is our job. So, we started the day knowing that we were going to work and getting the EOC ready. We had a conference call with all emergency services, leaders of those agencies, our fire chief, police chief, ambulance chiefs, communications center and some of the leaders in the community.”
Silva said it lets everyone know it’s coming and what to expect.
“And then we see a lot of us in here getting ready for the storm, getting the shelter ready, coordinating with different shelter locations in case the need comes for long term sheltering, just being as ready as we can for the storm to come,” he said. “At five o'clock, we already had the doors open at the courthouse, which are remotely open by our IT director for the courthouse, and that means we already had the basement of the courthouse ready for a shelter.”
At that time, Silva was getting ready and sending a message out to his community emergency response teams for shelter support.
When the storm hit, there were about 25 people in the shelter.
Silva added, not only was there a bad storm, but also a lot of fires in the county.
“The conditions were perfect for bad fires,” he said. “I believe there were about 100 acres on fire on south 17 and all around the county and the region. I had my fire services out there fighting those fires. So, some may not have been aware (that a storm is coming). So that's what we're also doing, providing that awareness for our firefighters, that, hey, it's 20 minutes out, 10 minutes out, five minutes out, providing support for our sheriff department as well, the same way we did with the emergency, with the fire, and once the storm came, it was just a matter of bracing ourselves.”
There was some damage in the county from the storm, but Pulaski County was not hit as hard as was neighboring Phelps County.
Neighbors helping neighbors: ‘We’re all family’
Benjamin Rudy, volunteer coordinator in Pulaski County, is someone who helps find funding for certain protective measures, like providing hotels for those in need and he helped lead volunteer efforts after a tornado ripped through Rolla.
Silva said the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) has a Region I group that meets quarterly, so neighboring counties can work and coordinate together in times of emergencies, such as Pulaski County did when helping in Phelps.
“These are our neighbors, we’re all family. We’re all in the same boat,” Silva said. “I expect that if we get hit that severely, all my neighboring counties will come and help us. So, if that's my expectation, the least I could do is be there and provide whatever they need. And that is not only my decision. As soon as it happened our commissioners are all telling me, hey, anything they need over there, send it. We went to their coordination meeting. I was there with our volunteer coordinator, Benjamin Rudy. Ben, he is an amazing soul. He just took the lead. They needed assistance and volunteer coordination. I told Brad Woods, who's the EMD in Rolla, that we've had success in coordinating volunteer efforts in the past, especially in the November floods, and that success mainly comes from the coordination skills of Benjamin Rudy. He took the lead and became the volunteer coordinator for the recovery efforts in Rolla and Phelps County.”
Silva said he sent resources from the City of Waynesville, electric crews to help the City of Rolla to assist with damage and power lines down, and the road and bridges crews to provide dumpster trucks for debris clean up, and even a backhoe.
“I take my hat off for those guys, you know, they were both working and assisting in Rolla, but they were also here,” Silva said, adding, “I ran into Kevin Davis at the TT highway in the middle of the night. It was like midnight, and they were out there working. So, I take my hat off for that crew and the electric people, all of the electrical companies.”
The cleanup window is closing because the response by the crews and volunteers “was amazing,” Silva said.
“This is when this happens. This is when I fall in love with my job,” he added. “Over and over, it is the community response. I think a total of almost 2,000 volunteers since Sunday have come together and helped in the community of Rolla and Phelps County.”
Volunteers coming together, providing food and their time, came from all around. They were from the city of Rolla and others in Phelps County, Salem in Dent County, and Pulaski County, too, he added, plus soldiers from Fort Leonard Wood.
“Their response has been amazing, and I saw it with my own eyes,” he said.
Fire and rain
Silva said recent high winds and dry weather conditions are a perfect combination to set dry grass ablaze, so be mindful when burning is not allowed in the county and wait until another day to burn when conditions are safer and get the okay from local fire departments.
Also, looking ahead, be mindful of having an emergency kit that’s kept in the vehicle, such as water, food and blanket. He also recommends having a weather radio.
“Turn around, don’t drown,” is the motto he passes along to everyone urging them not to take any chances when water is moving across roads or highways during heavy rains and when flood warnings are active in the county.
Silva recommends all in the county sign up for Hyper Reach emergency alert notification system. Go to http://hyper-reach.com/mopulaskisignup.html, call or text “alerts” to 573-433-8083.
The office’s social media page also posts continuously as much as they can to keep the public aware and alert.
