Photo: Cook County MN

By Natalie Rademacher • Exclusive to Boreal Community Media • February 14, 2022

Mike Keyport is busy. He is a one man show overseeing emergency management throughout Cook County. He made some time to sit down with Boreal this week to talk about his experience leading the county’s emergency response during a pandemic and what his priorities are for this year, 

Before this role Keyport, a Grand Portage band member, served as emergency management director in Grand Portage for 8 years. When the Cook County emergency management director position opened up in fall 2019, Keyport decided to apply because the county role has more responsibilities and it sounded like a nice change of pace. 

This background in safety and emergency management helped prepare him for the longest disaster he’d have to oversee. In March 2020, Keyport pulled together public health, hospital and county administrators and the chamber of commerce to figure out how to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. They opened an Emergency Operation Center to centralize resources and had to figure out how to do most of this work remotely. 

“It was quite a process at the beginning bringing these people together,” he said. 

The community quickly jumped in to help. Residents donated money and others made cloth masks for the county to distribute. The response was so strong Keyport needed to assign a person to manage the donations, and North Shore Healthcare matched donations brought in.

“Cook County is a generous county,” he said. 

The county has had one of the most effective responses to the pandemic in the state – it has had by far the lowest number of cases per capita and didn’t have a COVID-19 death until last November.

Keyport has been instrumental in providing resources to the community; he brought in almost 500 gallons of hand sanitizer and would host community events where people lined up in their cars to pick up supplies. 

Keyport also purchased about 2,000 KN95 masks in the earlier days of the pandemic. For a while, Keyport wondered what he would do with the masks since most of them sat in boxes for months. 

But when the omicron variant arrived a couple months ago, local residents started seeking them out and Keyport was happy to provide. He only has about 25 masks left now. 

“I had thought for sure those masks would sit in my office forever,” he said. 

Before the pandemic, the emergencies Keyport worked with were quick events – like storms, flooding or fire – and would be over in a day or two. A few days would be spent responding to the emergency and within a week or so, the emergency was over and Mike could begin filing paperwork to FEMA to see what kind of federal support the county could get. 

But two years in the COVID-19 emergency is still here, and Mike continues to help with the county’s evolving needs. 

“It’s very different from any other emergency I’ve been involved in,” he said. 

The pandemic has been at the forefront for most of Keyport’s time as county emergency management director, but he still manages to keep up with his other duties. 

Keyport attends many meetings – at one point he was involved with 23 committees – and is responsible for tasks such as creating the blue address signs that help emergency responders find a home. He has had to make many of those signs in the past year because of the influx in people buying properties in the county. 

“I made more signs in 2021 than have ever been made in the county,” he said. 

He also oversaw the county’s response to the wildfires last summer and helped manage emergency operations during the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline protests. 

Keyport worked long days during wildfire season last year and had to get assistance from another emergency management director so he could have a day off. Keyport is part of a regional cohort of emergency management directors across 11 counties, 5 tribes and the city of Duluth that share resources and assist each other in emergencies.

“It was just kind of one thing after the other,” he said of the emergencies he worked with last year. 

Keyport describes his job as circular. When an emergency happens, he leads efforts to respond to it and helps with recovery efforts. Afterwards, he reflects on what worked, what didn’t and adapts so the county can mitigate for potential disasters and prepare for when one comes. 

The down times between emergencies is when Keyport focuses on educating the community. 

Training people on how to respond to an emergency is a big part of Keyport’s role and something he’s missed doing in-person during the pandemic. 

He used to visit schools to hand out educational coloring books and give talks at community events. Keyport still gives presentations online, but he hopes to do more outreach this year so more people know what to do in an emergency. 

He plans to create a video that can be presented that explains what he does and what people should know about preparing for events like power outages and wildfires. 

He hopes to put more materials on the county’s emergency management webpage so people have a consistent place to find updated information. 

Residents can expect to hear more from Keyport during Severe Weather Awareness Week in April. He will have articles in the local paper and is planning creative ways to engage people with the information (there will be prizes). He encourages internet-savvy people to visit the National Weather Service website in April and explore topics like evacuation planning. 

“I want to help people know what to do,” he said. During the wildfires last year some residents were confused, and he hopes that having that information available in one place will make these situations easier for people. 

A team, including Keyport, go out every spring to teach residents about what to do if there’s a wildfire. They knock on the doors of every home along the Gunflint Trail and give residents information about how to evacuate and respond during a wildfire. He said the community enter is converted into an emergency shelter for people who need to evacuate during wildfires.

When asked about the influx of tourists visiting the county in the last couple years, Keyport said he doesn’t interact much with visitors in his role, but does get calls from people asking if it’s safe for them to backcountry camp or hold a family reunion in the county because of the pandemic. Most of the work educating visitors falls on the forest service, and Keyport applauds the work they do preparing people before they venture out in the BWCA. 

“It’s a tough call having to tell people what they should and shouldn’t do,” Keyport said.

This year, Mike Keyport was the Race Announcer for the John Beargrease Cub Run.  Photo: KBJR-TV

When Keyport isn’t busy responding to disasters and educating the community, he likes to take time off every year to help with the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon. Keyport is the great grandson of John Beargrease and his family has been helping with the race since it started in the 1980s. 

He served on the marathon’s board for a while and this year worked as a judge and assisted with the Mineral Center Road checkpoint. 

“I always take time off and follow the whole race. It’s a lot of work, but it’s fun work,” he said. 

Over the years, the marathon planners have figured out a system to make the race run smoothly so they no longer need planning help from the county emergency management director. Keyport appreciates this because it allows him to step back from his work role and help with the race in other capacities. 

About the author

Boreal Community Media welcomes Natalie Rademacher to its growing family of contributing journalists.  Natalie is the granddaughter of Mary (Blackwell) Harrelson. She is a Minneapolis-based copy editor and freelance journalist with articles published in the Star Tribune, Mankato Free Press, MinnPost, the Seattle Times, Associated Press, and U.S. World and News Report and more.  In her free time she enjoys reading literary nonfiction, hiking and visiting her grandma on the North Shore.