Whitfield EMA Named Agency Of Year By State Association

Whitfield County Emergency Management Agency has been named 2016 Georgia Emergency Management Agency of the Year by the Emergency Management Association of Georgia.

EMA Director Claude Craig, along with Deputy Director Jeff Ownby and Emergency Management Specialist Amy Cooley, picked up the award on April 22, the closing day of the Annual Emergency Management Summit and Training Session held by EMAG at the Savannah Trade and Convention Center in Savannah.

“It’s a great honor to know we were recognized for our work that has helped make Whitfield County and the citizens more prepared for when a disaster strikes this community,” Ms. Cooley said, a notion seconded by Dir. Craig and Deputy Dir. Ownby.

The award was based on the wide range of activities of Whitfield EMA during 2015, including the PrepareAthon! and a partnership with the Red Cross to distribute more than 700 free weather radios and smoke detectors to local residents. EMA also continued to support the CERT program (Community Emergency Response Team) that since 2010 has taught more than 230 residents how to keep their families, neighbors, and community safer in the aftermath of a disaster. Whitfield plans to have two CERT classes this year, including one in June that is accepting participants.

“This award serves as a reminder that you have to lead looking through the windshield and not the rearview mirror,” Dir. Craig said. “You can’t lead by looking at what happened yesterday; you’ve got to lead by looking at what’s possible tomorrow.”

Last year’s PrepareAthon!  - which made Whitfield the first county in Georgia to partner with FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, for that event - pushed the importance of residents being prepared for emergencies of all kinds, natural and man-made. Activities included tornado drills at schools, churches, and major industries like Mohawk and Shaw.

“We’ve also been involved with Dalton State College and Georgia Northwestern College, along with our city and county schools, doing exercises with them and trying to keep them as safe as they can be,” Dir. Craig said, recapping EMA activities last year.

Deputy Dir. Ownby said that EMA officials frequently take a look at healthcare facilities or chemical plants when requested. “We’ll go out and visit them and do as much or as little as they want,” he said. “Sometimes they just want to show us a new chemical or new manufacturing process they’re starting so we’ll be aware of it. We’re also in the midst of planning a hazardous materials transportation exercise towards the end of the year. We’ve always got something like that going on.”

Whitfield EMA also is taking advantage of technology, using social media to spread the word about being prepared for disasters.

“We try to lead by example on social media,” Dir. Craig said, “and we also reach out to our broadcast media and print media. We tell our peers that you’ve got to have these people behind you to be a successful agency. You’ve got to have the media behind you, and we appreciate the help of folks like WDEF-TV and North Georgia Radio Group.”

After picking up the EMAG award, Dir. Craig and Deputy Dir. Ownby headed to the 2016 Statewide Mobile Communication Vehicle Functional Field Exercise  held May 3-6 in Stone Mountain, where more than 30 emergency management teams from federal, state and local entities in the Southeast participated, according to Jim Milsap, Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency communications lead.

Each team had to work through a list of tasks designed to ensure the different agencies could communicate efficiently and overcome technical obstacles associated with syncing digital communications systems, according to Mr. Milsap. Exercise communication was accomplished via e-mail, web-based interfaces, radio voice-communication, and high-frequency radio devices. When multiple emergency response units arrive at a scene to collaborate, the respective teams may be using different technology systems to communicate. Overcoming these differences is at the core of the exercise objective.

“This year is a record year,” Mr. Milsap said. “We had 183 participants and 32 mobile command vehicles. We’ve got helicopter support, Civil Air Patrol, amateur radio support. If it has anything to do with communications, it’s here.”

One thing that wasn’t there, though, was the Whitfield EMA Mobile Communication Vehicle, which was in Wisconsin getting new equipment installed, courtesy of a Homeland Security grant.

The 11-year-old vehicle had outlasted its original technology systems, and pretty much anything electronic is being replaced, Deputy Dir. Ownby said.

Besides being used for local emergencies, the local vehicle is frequently called upon by state emergency officials to help during times of crisis. Whitfield EMA has built a strong reputation with those officials, who know they can be counted on to offer a helping hand when needed, in addition to teaching emergency-related courses.

“There’s a lot of equipment on the vehicle,” Deputy Dir. Ownby said, “but it’s not the vehicle that makes it work. It’s the team to go with it, which is usually Claude, Amy and me and folks from other agencies like the fire department, 911, etc. We got deployed two years ago and were the only non-state agency working with the Counterterrorism Task Force for seven days in an exercise in Perry. It was a great experience for us.”

The Emergency Management Association of Georgia has three primary goals. The first is to assist members in their efforts to save lives and protect property from the effects of disasters. Second, it provides a forum for professionals to discuss current issues in the emergency management field. And finally, EMAG serves as a policy advisory board both to local emergency management agencies and to the Georgia Emergency Management & Homeland Security Agency (recently renamed from Georgia Emergency Management Agency).