CDP to welcome Joint Field Office to campus

The Joint Field Office (JFO) for two disasters which impacted central and northern Alabama earlier this year will soon call the Center for Domestic Preparedness (CDP) home.

JFOs are unified command centers for disasters and are typically occupied by FEMA, state and tribal administrative staff, as well as other federal agencies.

The JFO for disasters 4684, which covers 11 counties, including Dallas County, where the city of Selma is located, and 4710, which covers 10 counties, including Lauderdale County, where the city of Florence is located, had been operating out of the state emergency operations center (EOC) in Clanton. However, the EOC is scheduled to soon undergo renovation.

The 15 remaining workers in the JFO, which had nearly 300 employees at its peak, will operate out of the third floor of the Noble Training Facility on the CDP campus.

“We truly appreciate the support of the CDP and its leadership team,” said Kevin Wallace, Sr., the federal coordinating officer for the response and recovery efforts for the disasters.

“While we expect to have a small footprint on the CDP campus, the accommodations are top-notch and allow us to expand, if needed,” he said.

The move follows a similar JFO operation on the CDP campus in 2021, which was established to support recovery efforts from tornadoes in March of that year in Calhoun County (where the CDP is located), and several nearby counties.

At the height of that disaster response, a total of 174 FEMA and Alabama Emergency Management Agency employees worked out of the CDP.