Montrose County Announces Hiring of Emergency Manager Kristy Mathews

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 12, 2026
Contact: Erika Story, Montrose County Communications Director
estory@montrosecounty.net, (970) 417-8711

Montrose County Announces Hiring of Emergency Manager Kristy Mathews

MONTROSE, COLO - Montrose County is pleased to announce the hiring of Kristy Mathews as the County’s new Emergency Manager. Ms. Mathews brings more than a decade of experience in emergency management, disaster response, recovery coordination, and public preparedness initiatives. 

Most recently, Mathews served as Emergency Management Manager for the City of Fort Myers, Florida, where she founded and led the city’s Emergency Management Division and coordinated large scale response and recovery efforts for major hurricanes, including Hurricanes Ian, Helene, and Milton. In that role, she managed multi agency operations, oversaw federal disaster recovery funding, and helped strengthen community preparedness and resilience efforts citywide. 

Prior to her work with the City of Fort Myers, Mathews held leadership roles with the Florida Department of Health, where she coordinated public health emergency operations most notably during the COVID-19 outbreak, managed preparedness grants, and supported statewide public health and hurricane response operations and emergency communications programs. 

Throughout her career, Mathews has been recognized for building collaborative emergency management programs, leading complex incident operations, and conducting extensive community outreach and education efforts. She has also presented nationally on emergency management topics and managed more than $80 million in post disaster FEMA projects. 

Montrose County looks forward to the experience and leadership Ms. Mathews will bring as she works to support emergency preparedness, response, recovery, and resilience efforts across Montrose County.

For more information about Montrose County Emergency Management or to sign up for Emergency Alerts, please visit the Montrose County Emergency Management webpage and follow on facebook.

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