Gordon County was first certified as a Storm Ready community in 2005. Gordon County has continued to improve our capabilities each year and with each renewal of our Storm Ready designation. This 2017 renewal marks the 5th 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 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 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 utilizes several additional applications to receive and disseminate information to critical facilities and resources for deployment as well.
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.
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.
