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Photo by Erin Nelson.
Hub Harvey, director of Shelby County’s Emergency Management Agency, sits at a desk in the emergency operations center bunker with various maps and charts displayed on monitors July 28.
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Photo by Erin Nelson.
Hub Harvey, director of Shelby County’s Emergency Management Agency, pulls up various maps and charts on monitors in the emergency operations center bunker July 28.
While making his coffee each morning, Hub Harvey checks the hazardous weather outlook and hurricane center. Not just for his own peace of mind, but because he is tasked with the responsibility of anticipating hazards and effectively dealing with disasters in Shelby County.
In his eighth year as the Emergency Management Agency director, Harvey has more responsibilities than most people realize, only one of them being monitoring and responding to severe weather. He is responsible for keeping the people of the fifth largest county in Alabama safe.
“People think we just sit around and wait for the weather to change,” Harvey said. “There is so much to this job that people don’t really know.”
The path to this position was an interesting one. Harvey received a law degree from Samford University and worked as a deputy district attorney in Montgomery for several years at the beginning of his career.
“Every member of my immediate family except my wife is an attorney,” Harvey said. “I practiced for several years with my dad but knew it wasn’t what I wanted to do the rest of my life. The opportunity came up to work with the DA in Montgomery. I worked prosecuting street crimes then took over prosecuting crimes against children and handled those for several years.”
Law was not his passion, so Harvey then obtained his Master’s in Divinity from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He was given the “unbelievable” opportunity to work for the Billy Graham Evangelical Association as a Crusade Associate for Franklin Graham for two years. He and his wife, Joy, moved all over the country — from South Carolina to Washington — a total of 14 times in their first 10 years of marriage.
In 2010, he began teaching online courses for Liberty University. Currently in his 10th year, he serves as an assistant professor for the graduate school of business.
Harvey also worked with Southern Baptist Disaster Relief and was present at almost every major disaster east of the Mississippi River over a six-year period, including the April 2011 tornadoes in Alabama, floods in Iowa and Minnesota and Hurricanes Katrina, Ivan and Gustav. He was also a team leader after the earthquakes in Haiti.
“I spent a lot of time volunteering, and I loved doing disaster relief and saw the difference you could make by going to where people were hurting, just using the ministry of your presence or giving them a cold cup of water,” he said. “When the opportunity came up for this position at Shelby EMA, my wife Joy and I talked about it and prayed about it. I could actually get paid, retirement and benefits for something I’m spending money out of my pocket I’m doing already.”
Shelby County Manager Chad Scroggins said the county is blessed to have Harvey serving as the EMA director, adding that Harvey approaches every day and every person as an opportunity to provide service and ministry to others.
It has been quite a year in 2020 for Harvey, who said any sense of normal has gone out the window. In January, the county launched the Shelby ALerts emergency notification system, which Harvey says has gone over really well.
In February, an F-2 tornado touched down in Helena, the fourth in the county in nine months. Then came flooding from weeks of rain before COVID-19 shut things down in March. Severe weather season lasted from March through May, then right behind it is hurricane season.
“What people don’t realize is that even afternoon popup storms, with no tornado warning, can cause 50 to 60 trees down in the 808 square miles of Shelby County,” Harvey said.
Harvey is responsible for coordinating the resources to handle those situations as they arise. He works with other organizations, including local fire and police departments, the Red Cross, the Alabama Department of Environmental Management and the Alabama Department of Public Health.
“We normally talk to our reps in the emergency preparedness division at the Alabama Department of Public Health often, but during COVID-19, those conversations are basically happening every day, some on Saturdays and Sundays,” Harvey said. “We talk about where we are going, emerging trends and the latest information on how we can be in the best position.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Harvey has been instrumental in setting up drive-through testing clinics and coordinating efforts around the county. He said it takes his team almost a week to get everything setup to host a three-hour clinic.
A member of the International Society for Infectious Diseases, Harvey spends a lot of his time reading journal articles to keep up on emerging trends and see where things are going. He is also already having meetings to discuss what will happen when a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available.
“I’ve already met with public health, and we are looking at facilities,points of distribution and going overall the plans.”
Harvey has also been working on updating the county’s Hazard Mitigation Plan. It has to be updated every five years and has about a year and a half left on the current one, so Harvey takes any extra time he has to work on it. It includes important elements that are critical in everything the EMA does.
The Shelby EMA is only a two-person office. Harvey and Mindy Nash are both on call 24/7, 365 days a year. Harvey lives between Chelsea and Columbiana and feels good knowing he is only 10.9 miles away from his office. He said they have great people around them and are part of a really great team.
“When disaster hits, we all come together and do what we need to help the public,” he said. “A lot of our job is to help Shelby County be a resilient community and fast as possible get back to where we were before.”
Shelby County Sheriff John Samaniego said that Harvey works hard to serve the Shelby County community and knows he and the assets of the Shelby County EMA are a phone call away at any time of day or night and that he plays a key role in making sure the EMA and Sheriff’s Office work well together.
“He is a great partner for the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office and has been great to inform us of grant opportunities that could benefit us,” Samaniego said. ”Thanks to him, we now have some much needed equipment that may not have been obtained without his help. He has a servant’s heart and wants to do everything he can to keep people from harm’s way.”
Another thing Harvey has spent time working on is the 2020 Census. There are 10 programmable road signs used for public health, which are being moved all over the county and showing COVID-19 information, as well as reminding people to complete their census.
One of his favorite statements is that smart people learn from experience and wise people learn from the experience of others. Harvey said that he is trying to watch what others are doing and be wise in how he makes decisions and move forward.
Harvey said that everything rises and falls on leadership and he uses one word to describe emergency management: relationships.
“We don’t have a lot of gear, but we bring a lot of experience and relationships with people that have the equipment and passion, knowledge, skills and ability. It’s a good thing if people don’t know what we’re doing, that means we’re doing a good job.”
