Emergency Management

Knox County Emergency Management Agency (KCEMA)

What is Emergency Management?

The Knox County Emergency Management Agency (KCEMA) is a cooperative venture between the City of Galesburg and Knox County to provide emergency management services to the area.

These services include planning for and response to disasters including but not limited to weather emergencies, hazardous material incidents, accidents involving mass casualties and other large scale incidents that would overwhelm the normal emergency response.

The Knox County All Hazards Mitigation Plan is available for the Public.

Emergency alert Notification

KCEMA implemented the Integrated Public Alert & Warning System (IPAWS) in March of 2026. This new capability allows county officials to send immediate, targeted, and life-saving information directly to residents’ mobile devices, televisions and radio stations during emergencies.

Developed by FEMA, IPAWS is a modernization of the nation’s alert and warning infrastructure. By integrating IPAWS, KCEMA can now send Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) to cell phones, as well as Emergency Alert Systems (EAS) messages to radio and television, simultaneously, even when cellular networks are congested.

“Our top priority is the safety of our residents,” said Galesburg Fire Chief and Knox County Emergency Manager Randy Hovind. “Implementing IPAWS gives us the ability to provide critical, time-sensitive information, such as evacuation orders, flash flood warnings, or shelter-in-place instructions, directly to your phone. When time matters most, this technology will save lives.”

What residents need to know about IPAWS:

1. No Sign-Up Required: Unlike our previous alert system CodeRed, IPAWS (specifically Wireless Emergency Alerts) uses cell tower technology to send messages to all phones within a specific geographic area.
2. Targeted Information: Alerts will only be sent to individuals in the immediate vicinity of a danger, avoiding “alert fatigue” for those not affected.
3. It is for Emergencies Only: IPAWS will be used for severe, life-threatening events requiring immediate action.
4. Sound and Text: Wireless Emergency Alerts make a unique high-pitched sound followed by a text message.
5. Phone setup to receive alerts:
   1. iPhone Users:
      1. Open Settings | Notifications
      2. Scroll all the way to the very bottom to the "Government Alerts" section.
      3. Ensure the toggles for AMBER Alerts, Emergency Alerts and Public Safety Alerts are turned ON.
      4. New for 2026: Check for "Local Awareness" or "Enhanced Safety Alerts" and turn them on to improve the speed and accuracy of alerts based on your exact location.
   2. Android Users:
      1. Open Settings
      2. Search for "Wireless Emergency Alerts" (usually found under Safety & Emergency or Notifications).
      3. Ensure "Allow Alerts" is toggled ON.
      4. Make sure specific categories like Extreme Threats, Severe Threats and Public Safety Messages are all checked ON.

This new system will replace our previous alerting system, CodeRED. If you had the CodeRED app, feel free to delete it.
Phone setup to ensure you receive IPAWS alerts:

KCEMA Emergency Preparedness Guide and Family Plan

Your KCEMA put together a guide (please be patience while this document loads) and planning tool to help our citizens prepare ahead of time for emergency situations. The idea for this project was brought to Chief's attention in September of 2023. KCEMA Emergency Preparedness Guide and Family Disaster Plan are both available for our citizens in the document center. If you have any suggestions, please email them to KCEMA.

KCEMA links

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Annual Disaster Drill And Planning Committee

Illinois Emergency Management Agency requires one actual, staged Community Disaster Drill every other year.

The Emergency Management Agency's Disaster Committee plans and stages Galesburg/Knox County's Community Disaster Drill. Some of the past scenarios include an aircraft accident, boiler explosion, hazardous material, terrorist incident and school bus accident. All of these drills included triage and transport of mock victims and simulations of hazardous conditions for the emergency responders to deal with.

The Committee consists of volunteers from medical and emergency response sectors as well as major transportation facilities. American Red Cross, Bridgeway Mental Health Services, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, Carl Sandburg College Nursing Program, City of Galesburg Human Services, Galesburg Hospitals' Ambulance Service, Galesburg Cottage Hospital, Galesburg Fire Department, Galesburg Police Department, Knox County Sheriff's Department, Knox County Health Department, OSF St. Mary Medical Center, and Salvation Army personnel have been participating in the planning and staging of the annual drills.

The goal of the committee is to plan and stage a realistic drill to prepare an emergency response and ancillary groups in case an actual mass casualty incident should occur. This testing of Galesburg's emergency response systems is an excellent method to identify any problem areas and take corrective action to upgrade those areas to enable a smooth, efficient, life and property-saving response.