Gordon County was first certified as a Storm Ready community in 2005. Gordon County Emergency Management has continued to improve our capabilities each year and with each renewal of our Storm Ready designation. This 2015 renewal marks the 4th renewal of Storm Ready in Gordon County.
Storm Ready is a nationwide program that helps communities better protect their citizens during severe weather from tornadoes to tropical storms. The program encourages communities to take a proactive approach to improving local hazardous weather operations. Storm Ready provides emergency managers with clear-cut guidelines on how to improve their hazardous weather operations.
Gordon County Emergency Management has blended the use of current technology along with more traditional means of receiving and disseminating weather warnings and information. This approach is designed with multiple backups in mind. The multi faceted plan involves promotion of more traditional weather radio for citizens and critical facilities, as well as the use of Ready Warn to automatically push weather watches and warnings to the Gordon County Emergency Management Facebook and Twitter social media sites. Code Red Weather Warnings are also disseminated to those in the path of the storm directly to their cell or home phone once signed up at www.gordoncounty.org. In addition Gordon County Emergency Management utilizes several additional applications to receive and disseminate information to critical facilities and resources for deployment as well. “It is very important to have multiple ways to receive and disseminate weather warnings and information to the people in our community, and we have worked to utilize the most effective resources,” said Richard Cooper, Director of Gordon County Emergency Management.
Storm Ready certification is based upon multiple criteria, including:
- Establishment of a 24-hour warning point and emergency operations center;
- Having multiple methods to receive severe weather warnings and forecasts and to alert the public;
- Creation of a system that monitors weather conditions locally;
- Promoting the importance of public readiness through community seminars and events;
- Development a formal hazardous weather plan, which includes training severe weather spotters and holding emergency exercises.
You can contact us at 706 602 2905 or ema@gordoncounty.org for more information or to schedule us for an event or presentation to your group. For more information, like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/gordoncountyema and follow us on Twitter @gordoncountyema. Sign up for Code Read Emergency Weather Warnings.
