Carson City emergency center to help with Harvey relief

The Federal Emergency Management Agency on Thursday announced it will expand its Carson City emergency Recovery Service Center to help deal with the thousands of calls expected in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.

The Carson City center was created following the flooding and fires that hit western Nevada last spring and early summer, handling the needs of disaster victims across the area surrounding Carson City.

FEMA spokesman David Passey said following the damage caused by Harvey in the past week, the agency will need a large number of additional customer service representatives to help victims. He said it made sense to use the Carson Center as a base to create an expanded Recovery Service Center. One advantage of Carson City, Passey said, is it’s completely unlikely the Nevada capital would ever be affected by a hurricane.

“We were looking at South Carolina, Puerto Rico,” he said adding those areas could wind up being impacted by the hurricane season, too.

“This allows us to tap a different labor pool we hope will be able to help out,” he said.

That center will employ up to 300 people who Passey said will be the initial contact for many victims looking for help in Texas and other parts of the South. And he said they hope to hire many of those workers locally. The recruitment notices were posted Wednesday.

Passey emphasized the hurricane center won’t impact the ongoing work of the existing Carson City center.

“We’re looking for people willing to be the front line, the first person a disaster survivor will be speaking with,” he said.

Those people will be responsible for helping victims register for help and connect to the services they need. He said recruits will initially be hired for 120 days but their employment could well be extended.

He said the initial workforce of professional disaster relief personnel will arrive Monday to begin the process of staffing up.

People interested in the positions should go to https://usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/478377600.