Sylvan Mutschler, county Emergency Management Agency director, will be particularly busy in the next few weeks as the nation continues under "high" alert.

Tomorrow night he will lead an information meeting on smallpox immunization in the first floor courtroom of the Marengo County Courthouse in Linden.

The meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m., and the public is invited.

Area residents can also see their county "first responders" in action March 1 as an emergency preparedness drill will be held at 9 a.m. in the parking lot of the old Linden Manufacturing Plant on Highway 28 East.

Participating in the exercise will be the Linden Volunteer Fire Department, members of the Demopolis Fire Department, the Linden Police Department, Marengo Fire and Rescue and the West Alabama Hazardous Materials Team.

Local Boy Scouts will also be involved in a mock terrorism scenario.

There will be a post-exercise briefing at the Linden fire station, he said. The drill is designed to show emergency personnel and the public the problems and hazards they might encounter in the post-9/11 world.

Mutschler also announced that meteorologist Chris Bailey and the weather team from WAKA-TV Channel 8 in Selma will hold a storm awareness town hall meeting at 7 p.m. on February 25 in the Demopolis Civic Center.

A small tornado simulator machine will be on display that evening.

Mutschler appeared at Tuesday’s meeting of the Marengo County Commission and expressed his concern about the dwindling American Red Cross presence in the county.