Dan Reece
Emergency Management  - Volunteer 

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Dan is a retired 30 year Air Force combat decorated veteran having served our country on Active Duty, the Air Force Reserves, and our Missouri Air National Guard.  He volunteered to deploy overseas on multiple combat and combat support tours as a pilot flying the C-130.  He continued his spirit of volunteerism supporting the American Red Cross as a Damage Assessor in the 1994 floods and volunteered with both Clay County Emergency Preparedness and Public Health as an emergency planner helping build, facilitate and evaluate multiple exercises in areas such as novel Pandemic Influenza, COVID-19, medical countermeasures Point of Distribution, Bio Terrorism, and New Madrid Seismic Zone evacuee reception.  He provided support to the people and Smithville Incident Commander during the 2017 tornado in their Emergency Operations Center. 

 

During COVID-19 he volunteered as Chief of Plans in the Clay County Emergency Operations Center and volunteered to be the Multi-Agency Coordination Chief of Plans for both the Missouri and Kansas planning teams.  He has been actively involved in developing a cadre of translators for the multiple languages that are needed in our County and was instrumental in rapidly disseminating emergency messages in multiple languages during the initial COVID-19 response.  During his continued volunteer support of our County he synchronized with regional partners to benefit Clay County on the Interfaith Preparedness Advisory Group, the Task Force Early Childcare, multiple COVID-19 regional response teams and the Northland Homeless Assistance Coalition. 

 

While serving in the Missouri Air National Guard Dan was selected to serve as a Joint plans officer at USNORTHCOM in Colorado Springs where he worked on multi-service multi-jurisdictional teams developing Global and National Contingency plans where he synchronized Federal, State and local response.  Upon his return from USNORTHCOM he was selected as the 139th Airlift Wing’s Emergency Manager and Civil Support Plans officer.  Because he knew the value of local knowledge and relationships he trained National Guard Liaisons and stood up Joint Task Forces to support multiple County Emergency Management Directors both in Missouri and Kansas on multiple flood events and severe winter weather operations.  He developed and led numerous exercises increasing the Wing’s ability to respond to natural and man-made disasters. 

 

Dan’s military background includes Air Operations Center air campaign planning, strategy, and exercises; contingency global airlift planning; and Joint Army, Air Force air ground integration command and control training.   Dan’s volunteering spirit in Deliberate and Crisis Action planning, team building, and synchronization continues to prove valuable to our County.  He now continues his mission of increasing our quality of life, saving lives and reducing the suffering of our Clay County community as our Emergency Preparedness Specialist.