CERT responders George Lo Greco, Johnnie Dotson, Christina Byrd, and Barbara Jones are shown at the Kids Safety Day, when they helped educate the community about CERT, weather radios, preparedness, and CodeRED weather notifications
photo by Mitch Talley
Emergency Management Director Claude Craig, Tim Reeve from GEMA, Jeff Ownby, and Amy Cooley, administrative assistant at EMA
photo by Mitch Talley
Christina Byrd and Jeff Ownby with the disaster survival kits
photo by Mitch Talley
Being ready for a disaster is vital, say officials with Whitfield County Emergency Management Agency.
EMA ended the county’s first PrepareAthon, a national emergency preparedness awareness campaign that kicked off earlier this year. Ironically, the original PrepareAthon disaster day was the victim of storms back in April.
Since Home Depot always conducts a Kids Safety Day the first Saturday in October, EMA officials decided to use this event as the conclusion of their 2015 PrepareAthon. EMA and CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) officials were on hand to sign up people for CodeRED and the new CERT class in November.
“We also gave away several disaster kits and weather radios to those who signed up for CERT or CodeRED,” EMA Deputy Director Jeff Ownby said. “We gave out preparedness literature and programmed weather radios if they were brought by or purchased. We built a disaster response kit from merchandise found at Home Depot and then gave it away as a raffle prize.”
Home Depot donated two Oregon scientific weather radios and the disaster preparedness kit (Homer Bucket), and EMA donated 20 one-day survival kits and one zombie three-day survival kit.