Malia Riggs
Elmore Autauga News
The dynamic duo, longtime resident Kristen Morgan helps to welcome new Emergency Management Agency Director, David Bagley in their newly appointed roles with the Autauga County EMA. Bagley was appointed director around last October while Morgan was appointed deputy director this past December.
The Autauga County Commission appointed Morgan for this promotion that went into effect on December 23rd of 2023, and Bagley has been with Autauga County EMA since April of 2023, and was appointed as director last October. Bagley replaced Earnie Baggett, who formerly held the position since 2013.
“I’m a big proponent of training and exercises. That’s how we get our job done, and I want to see us do a lot more of that. But not just the exercises, we need to facilitate discussions, if this happened, what would we do? That will identify a lot of areas where, ‘oh I didn’t think about that’ and that makes changes in your plan with just a simple 20-40 minute conversation. That’s what’s important. It’s a new era for the EMA,” Bagley said.
Bagley is originally from Missouri and started his professional career in Texas. Bagley has a background in many things including logistics and web design, where he owned his own company for many years in the 90’s and early 2000’s. After 9/11, Bagley decided to take up volunteer firefighting and through those connections in Texas and after Hurricane Ike, his EMA career was born.
Finishing his degree through Covid, Bagley received his bachelor’s in public administration and political science with a minor in social science, and he and his wife moved from chasing grandbabies in Dothan to Autauga County for his EMA position.
Morgan also received her bachelor’s degree from Troy, and is a resident native to Autauga County. Morgan was born and raised here and has been working within Autauga County EMA the last 12 years. To Bagley, her promotion was a no-brainer, as Morgan was performing most of the duties as deputy director already.
“The biggest selling point for me, is that she’s been here for 12 years and we needed that stability. The other thing is, she’s been here in Autauga County her whole life and I’ve only been here for a few months. She has relationships built that would take me a while to build, and she can just pick up the phone and call just about anyone,” Bagley said.
“I probably give him too much information sometimes,” Morgan laughs. “He’s like, who’s that? ‘Oh, that’s so and so and her sister, she just had a baby!’ He goes right along with it though. We have different personalities, but we have to share everything. He knows that I prefer the long term recovery and the community groups, and we divide duties between us really well,” Morgan said.
Bagley stated that going forward the EMA deputy director and the director have been and will continue to work exceptionally close together. Only in rare exceptions that they both don’t have the same knowledge of any situation going forward.
The EMA is the agency with the plan. They are the ones that determine when a burn-ban goes into effect and much more. The EMA decides preventative measures to take and has a plan for any unfortunate disaster from a storm to a crash on the highway, in hopes of never using the plans. But in times of emergency, Autauga County turns to Bagley and Morgan for direction and coordination.
“That’s our job, we’re coordinating a response. We’re here to provide what the fire department needs, emergency services, public works and etc. I don’t need to run down and see the car wreck. I’ve been in fire departments over 20 years, I’ve seen a car wreck. But I need to know, do you need two ambulances? Do you need five ambulances? Do we need to activate helicopters? Do we need to have multiple landing zones? You tell me what you need, and that’s where we come in and we make it happen,” Bagley said.
Both Bagley and Morgan stressed that they don’t want to come in and rewrite the plans, they want to fill the gaps to make said plans more effective and efficient. They do this by offering schools or other programs with training and providing resources and access to preparedness for almost any situation.
“I mean those binders of plans are cute, but when everything is hitting the fan the planning is there and we take direction and know what to do, even if we don’t follow the plan exactly. You come alive when there’s a disaster happening,” Morgan said referring to the adrenaline she feels while helping in an emergency.
Bagley also stressed the need for Elmore and Autauga Counties to work together and praised the relationships that he’s built, and that Morgan has facilitated with other EMA directors and emergency response in surrounding counties.
Going forward both Morgan and Bagley want to focus on not only training and preparedness all across the county but also bringing back CERT, or community emergency response team, back to Autauga County as the program dissipated during Covid and has not been brought back since.
“CERT is a big thing, and it’s a huge help. I want to get that back up and running and that’s going to be one of the first steps once we get to full strength here, is getting CERT back up and into a viable program,” Bagley said.
At full strength, the EMA in Autauga County will be around three to four people. Once they are at full strength and fully staffed with an administrative assistant, Bagley confirmed they could be looking at offering internship opportunities in the near future.
But for now, their focus is what they do on a local level, and how to coordinate what Autauga County needs on a day-to-day basis.
