Governor Greitens announces SEMA director and state fire marshal

A former instructor at the University of Missouri Fire and Rescue Training Institute was named State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) director Wednesday.

Governor Eric Greitens appointed Ernie Rhodes as SEMA director and Tim Bean as state fire marshal at the St. Louis Fire Academy.

Right now, Rhodes is the fire chief for the West County EMS and Fire Protection District, the Operations Section chief for FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Blue Incident Support Team, and is a member of Missouri Task Force-1.

He has 32 years of emergency management and law enforcement experience including time as a firefighter and paramedic. He was also part of a Missouri rescue team dispatched to New York two days after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 and has been deployed to other disasters around the country.

Bean is the fire chief for the West Plains Fire Department and the Howell County assistant SWAT team leader and reserve deputy. He started as a volunteer firefighter and has amassed 32 years in fire safety and administration

Bean is also the president of the Howell County Fire Chiefs Association, president of the South Howell County Ambulance Education Committee, and first vice president of the Fire Fighters Association of Missouri.