Public Safety Director recaps on 2020

The year of 2020 will be a year to remember. As we move into a new year, Public Safety Director Doug Stephens says COVID-19 brought many challenges, but we are now striving because of the COVID-19 vaccine.

“It’s been a lot of trail and era, but we have made great strides since March,” said Stephens. “We have learned that masks and social distancing have been successful and somewhat flattening the curve. Now we have a vaccine in place and hopefully that will get us through this.”

During 2020, multiple loads of severe weather was endured. About 25 named storms and six major hurricanes sweep through the year.

“We’ve done very well here in Lauderdale County and the City of Meridian. We’ve been very fortunate. It’s been a very busy hurricane season, but we’ve survived things very minor damages and effects here, locally.”

With making many changes in 2020, such as family gatherings, Stephens hopes we can get back to a sense of normality in the new year.

“Hopefully in 2021, we’ll get past this pandemic and we can start to have those face to face encounters with people and hopefully we’ll appreciate those more.”

Stephens says now that we’ve made it to 2021, remain hopeful that this will start to get better tomorrow.