A consulting firm is working with Mathews County business owners and organizations to find out what they might be able to contribute to preparation and recovery efforts if a disaster were to strike the county.

Mathews County Emergency Services Coordinator Willie Love said a federal grant will be used to pay the consultant, Michelle Harris of Harwen Consulting, to catalog resources and assets the private sector might have to offer in case of an emergency incident in the county and to develop a manual containing the resulting information.

Assets could range from housing or a warming kitchen for displaced people to food, cots, sleeping bags and personal items.

Love said that other localities are looking at doing something similar, and that he considered it a necessity in Mathews. “We’re a small community and we have a department with limited resources,” he said. “We network the best we can, but we needed to be able to bring all our resources to bear in an emerge...