Overview

When an emergency incident occurs in Berrien County, an assessment will be made by the agency that responds to determine if they have sufficient resources to manage the incident.  If they need additional help, they may request assistance from the Emergency Management Division.  They will contact Emergency Management using the Berrien County Public Safety Communications Center (911).  BCPSCC is Emergency Management's 24/7 emergency call center.  The BCPSCC will contact the Emergency Management Duty Officer to inform the duty officer of the incident.  The Duty Officer will classify the incident to determine how much support and coordination is needed.  Many incidents are supported by Emergency Management using its day-to-day resources.  In some cases, the incident is so complex that the County needs to re-organize our Department organizational structure and require leadership from each Department to report to an Emergency Operations Center to facilitate teamwork and decision making.  When this is needed, we will likely declare a Local State of Emergency and activate our Emergency Operations Center.  

Intent and Scope of this Page

This page is intended to provide basic information about major emergency incidents in Berrien County.  Incident briefs are limited to only those in which the Emergency Operations Center was activated and a Local State of Emergency was necessary.  Active incident pages are created to summarize information the community may need.  The majority of the information we share with the community will be issued through news releases to the media.  When we are able to "catch up" we will update or web pages.  After an incident concludes, we will move the page to the past incidents section to provide a historical library.

How to Use

Click the "Active Incident" Header below to see current incident activity.  Click the "Past Incident" Header below to switch to historical records.