Globe City Council voted to approve the city’s emergency proclamation, Resolution 1921, during the council’s special meeting held earlier today.
The proclamation confirms the city’s declaration of emergency, granting Globe City Mayor Al Gameros the ability to impose necessary regulations, including curfews, ordering the closure of any business and public access to any public building, street, or other public place, and calling upon law enforcement agencies and organizations.
The proclamation also allows Gameros to approve expenditures of city funds during this state of emergency.
Mayor Gameros stated that the primary objective for the city is still search and rescue at this point as efforts are still underway.
“We need to make sure that every vehicle is searched, that was washed down the wash,” he said. “That's our primary goal. We know we have more rain coming.”
In response to questions on how many are reported deceased or missing, he said, “We can't confirm if there are or how many there are at this point, but we will be releasing that as soon as we get a report, probably this afternoon, by incident command.”
He said more than 150 volunteers are working on the scene, including resources from Tonto Rim Rescue, Maricopa Search and Rescue, Pima Search and Rescue, Tri-City Fire and Arizona Department of Public Safety, and that additional crews are en route.
The transfer of the incident from Chief Robinson of Globe Fire to a type three incident management team from the State Land Department is underway.
“It's critical that we keep people out of the downtown area. There's a lot of damage to the structures that make it dangerous to be down there,” Globe Police Commander Charles Haines said.
“There's an organized effort from a lot of different agencies searching the buildings, making sure that there's nobody in there,” he said. “For right now, we're asking people to leave it to the professionals who can go down there and do an organized search to make sure that we don't have anybody that is unaccounted for.”
Haines says that according to the Gila County Sheriff’s office, there have only been a couple of missing reports from dispatch so far, but asks the community to please notify the department of others who are not accounted for.
Globe Police has an emergency operations center set up and is working with the Arizona Department of Public Safety and with the Gila County Sheriff's Department.
Shelters are still in place at Lee Kornegay Intermediate School in Miami and High Desert Middle School in Globe.
Matlock Gas is sending a team to work on removing propane tanks that were strewn throughout downtown Globe from the flood.
“I was told this morning that there were probably over 1,000 bottles that were released out of this facility to the south of the city,” Gameros said.
Public Works Director John Angulo, who leads the public works department in overseeing management, maintenance, and improvement to the city’s infrastructure, said that there has been minimal disruption to the city’s water system. Two main breaks occurred last night but have been isolated.
Service from Southwest Gas has been isolated and turned off for the downtown Globe area, he said. He is waiting to confirm whether service from APS will be on tonight.
He added that the department is focusing on driveways and drainages and may close Walliman Road in the near future, where many homes were impacted.
“At some point in the near future, we may be putting a PSA out that we're going to go ahead and close that,” Angulo said.
Linda Oddonetto stated that she is in the process of coordinating with Red Cross for smaller donations and Salvation Army for larger donations, including coordinating a landing place for larger donations of pallets of food and drinks.
“We have a lot of people reaching out and wanting to make cash donations, and the organization that did this a few years ago when we had our fire and floods was the United Fund of Globe Miami,” she added. “We did establish a recovery fund for residents and their homes, and we have some funding remaining. “We're going to be opening that back up.”
“Another part of that will also be a recovery fund for business owners, and again, those details are getting ironed out right now,” she said.
The city is in communication with Senator Kelly’s office. Conversations are also underway with the Governor’s Office and Congressman Eli Crane regarding release of funds for Globe.
“Our priority, once we're able to open downtown, is to let the business people in first, if those buildings are secure,” Mayor Gameros said.
The Globe Miami Chamber of Commerce is also creating a sign-up list for volunteers once it’s safe to help.
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