Date:  June 25, 2004
Contact: Renee Hoffman
Phone: 919-733-5027

N.C. EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT EMPLOYEE WINS NATIONAL AWARD

RALEIGH - Tim Miller, Western Branch Manager for the North Carolina Division of Emergency Management, received the Higgins and Langley Memorial Award for Excellence in Swiftwater Rescue earlier this month. The award was presented at the National Association for Search and Rescue Conference in Lansdowne, VA. Miller, who won in the Special Commendation category, was one of only seven recipients during this year’s awards ceremony.

“Tim is a very humble man, and he gets embarrassed easily when we say nice things about him,” said Dr. Kenneth Taylor, director of N.C. Emergency Management. “But sometimes we need to shout from the mountaintop about quality state employees like Tim, and this is one of those times.”

Miller has been the Western Branch Manager for the division since 1996 and has been instrumental in the area of swiftwater team development and deployment since 1997. Following his experience working the response to Hurricane Floyd in 1999, in which 35 of the 52 people killed died from drowning, Tim has worked tirelessly to improve the state’s swiftwater rescue capability. As a result of his leadership, more responders and rescuers in the state are now trained and equipped to properly respond to flood emergencies. In addition, the North Carolina National Guard now receives training to safely function in these flood areas, resources have been identified and typed based on capability, resources are now pre-deployed which proved very effective during Hurricane Isabel, and the state now has a capable helicopter water rescue resource that completed the initial training on May 1.

The Higgins-Langley Memorial Award for Excellence in Swiftwater Rescue was established in 1993 by members of the Flood and Swiftwater Rescue Committee of the National Association for Search and Rescue (NASAR). It is named in honor of Earl Higgins, a writer and filmmaker who lost his life in 1980 while attempting to rescue a child being swept down the flood swollen Los Angles River, and Jeffrey Langley, a firefighter-paramedic with the Los Angeles County Fire Department who lost his life in a helicopter incident in 1993. The awards are presented annually at the National Association for Search and Rescue Conference.

The Higgins-Langley Awards honor outstanding achievements in the field of swiftwater-flood rescue. In addition to team efforts and singular incidents or acts of heroism, rescue professionals who have been dedicated to developing and implementing swiftwater rescue training programs are also recognized. At present, all nominations are stringently reviewed and substantiated by a seven member board who serve as the directors of the award. This board includes members Nancy Rigg, a noted advocate, filmmaker, and writer on the discipline who was the fiancé of Earl Higgins; and Karen Langley Stephen, mother of Firefighter-Paramedic Jeff Langley.

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