Jeff Gilkey

Yell County Office of Emergency Management director receives state award

Jeff Gilkey, director of the Yell County Office of Emergency Management, stands on a bridge next to Danville City Hall. Gilkey, 39, has been the office’s director since 2010, and he was a detention officer before then. Gilkey received a state award earlier this month for his work with the Office of Emergency Management.
Jeff Gilkey, director of the Yell County Office of Emergency Management, stands on a bridge next to Danville City Hall. Gilkey, 39, has been the office’s director since 2010, and he was a detention officer before then. Gilkey received a state award earlier this month for his work with the Office of Emergency Management.

Jeff Gilkey of Danville, director of the Yell County Office of Emergency Management, wasn’t there to accept an award from the state agency earlier this month because he was, appropriately, out trying to help others.

“Of all things, I was down in Houston, [Texas], when they gave me the award,” he said. “It’s pretty amazing to get, for somebody in such a small county.”

Gilkey, 39, was named State Emergency Management Coordinator of the Year by the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management at its convention in Rogers.

Yell County Judge Mark Thone picked up Gilkey’s award for him.

“It was quite an honor for him; it was an honor for me to get to accept it for him,” Thone said. “He’s well thought of across the state by other coordinators.”

Thone said Gilkey was chosen by the Arkansas Emergency Management Association as the northwest area coordinator representative.

“He’s very organized, and he’s efficient. He knows how to get things done. He knows where to go and where to look for all the grants and stuff like that; he’s been a huge asset,” Thone said. “We’re real glad to have him; he just does an exceptional job.”

Gilkey is co-coordinator of the Yell County Dive Team with Kurt Radcliff. Gilkey said they and other

dive-team members went to Texas with representatives

of the Arkansas Fire Boat Task Force to try to help in the flooding from Hurricane Harvey.

Things didn’t go as planned, however.

“We didn’t do as much as we hoped,” Gilkey said.

They were diverted because of flooded roads and ended up in Vidor, Texas. He said there were many citizen rescues, as he calls them, which is good and bad.

“What had happened was, the Cajun Navy (a Louisiana grassroots residents’ organization) and volunteers with boats had come in there,” he said. People used their cellphones and the Zello walkie-talkie app to let rescuers know their locations, Gilkey said.

“The citizens did more rescues than probably most of our response teams,” he said. “You know what — it was great. There were some issues with they didn’t know where to take people when they saved them, and it tied up time looking for folks when they were gone already. The benefits outweigh the negatives.”

Let’s get this straight — Gilkey is not a diver.

“I barely can swim,” he said. Gilkey is a planner, an organizer, a motivator.

A career in emergency management wasn’t the obvious choice to him.

Gilkey grew up in Danville, where his parents owned a gas station and a wrecker service. He met his wife, Randee, in high school, and after graduation, Gilkey started working right away.

It dawned on him that he needed a real career.

“I actually did car repairs and played with race cars till I turned 28 and realized that that’s really not going to be the life I should live with a wife and a child on the way,” he said. “My family is everything to me.”

Gilkey got a full-time job working nights for the county at the detention center for two years and went back to school. “It was a good job,” he said. “Most people were good people, and luckily, everyone was sleeping at night.”

He spent a semester at the University of Arkansas Community College at Morrilton, then transferred to Arkansas Tech University in Russellville, where he earned a degree in emergency management.

His third year of school, he said, he got “very lucky.” He landed a part-time job working for the Office of Emergency Management, in addition to working at the detention center.

“I just really wanted a job where I could help people,” Gilkey said. “My whole life I’d been kind of taking care of myself, doing my own thing. Dad towed cars, and we’d see medics and firefighters and police out helping.”

Gilkey said he knew he didn’t want to be in law enforcement — although his older brother, Bill Gilkey, has been the Yell County sheriff for 20 years.

“Emergency management kind of caught my attention,” Jeff Gilkey said. “We’ve got the ability to help people.”

Gilkey said he doesn’t have a staff, but he works closely with Arkansas Tech and has a student intern or two every semester.

He said he’s one of only eight directors in the state who are certified by the International Association of Emergency Managers. He had to take a 100-question test, write an essay and do public speaking to become certified. He serves as a guest lecturer from time to time in the Arkansas Tech Department of Emergency Management.

Sandy Smith, chairwoman of the Tech department, said Gilkey brings “real-world experience” in his role of guest lecturer.

“He’s able to handle any hardball question or zinger that a student brings in, and then he’s able to tie it back to the real world,” she said. “He is awesome.”

Smith said Gilkey helped the Arkansas Tech department organize a preparedness expo last fall in Dardanelle, and he is helping with another one that is scheduled for April 3, 2018, in Danville.

Gilkey said his responsibilities as director of the Yell County office include writing and reviewing response and continuity plans for the county.

“If a tornado hit Danville, how would we respond? We could be out in the field setting up a command center. If something happened to the courthouse, … how do we get the courthouse up and running in 24 hours?” Gilkey asked.

“Although we’re not on the front lines out helping people, it’s the planning that makes a difference,” Gilkey said of his position in emergency management.

“The equipment I’ve got through grants — this is the stuff we do. We’re really making a difference in people’s lives here; that really means something to me,” he said.

“There’s a lot of things to be proud of in Yell County,” he said. “Our dive team is

something to be proud of. When I got this job, the dive team had two or three sets of gear and had to borrow a boat and a truck.”

Gilkey wrote successful grants totaling about $250,000 that allowed the county to buy a 24-foot enclosed trailer, a new boat and a truck.

“We got all new equipment,” he said, including full-face masks with communication capabilities, radios, generators and more.

“Our dive team has come from nothing to … now it’s a good dive team,” he said.

Gilkey said he and Thone worked together to adopt a national floodplain program that allowed Yell County residents to get flood insurance for their homes.

“That hadn’t ever been done,” Gilkey said.“We had a flooding disaster in April 2011 where we had a lot of damage on our roadways; two [floods] in 2015. In 2017, our citizens sustained major damage to their homes and property from wind, hail and a tornado.”

Gilkey said he helps with missing-person searches, too.

“We have a lot of calls, as far as people out in the wilderness going missing,” he said. “We have to go out and help find them. We’ve got great volunteers; we just go out and help them manage everything.”

Several incidents come to his mind, but one sticks out.

“We had a search around Blue Mountain Lake

for a baby and a father, and it didn’t turn out positive,” Gilkey said.

In July 2014, a man and his 10-month-old son were missing. Both were found dead, and the man’s wife, the mother, was found wandering along a road. She later pleaded

guilty to manslaughter in the baby’s death and received 10 years’ probation and had to undergo counseling, according to documents filed in Yell County Circuit Court.

Gilkey said that was one of many incidents when he got to work with his brother Bill, the sheriff.

“It’s actually pretty nice having him around. We’re typical brothers, but it’s a pleasure to be on call and look over and see him there,” Jeff Gilkey said.

“I rely solely on our volunteer fire departments and local police, and lucky for me, I’ve got probably the best group of people in the state of Arkansas a man could ask for. When I ask them to help or do something, they don’t bat an eye,” he said.

“That’s what’s made emergency management in Yell County as good as it is today — people willing to give their time and effort to help,”

he said.

“In the next 30 minutes, we may be looking for a missing person on the river,” Gilkey said. “It’s really kind of a guessing game. We don’t know what’s going to happen, but we’re going to do our best to control the outcome.

“At the end of the day, I work with a great group of folks trying to make somebody’s bad day better.”

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

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