By George Chidi and D. Aileen Dodd
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ATLANTA — The effect of the tornado’s path has been profound on Atlanta, but the ripples of activity among emergency responders in neighboring communities were a bit more subtle.
As damage reports drifted out from the city, Gwinnett’s fire department watched from an emergency operations center in Lawrenceville, wondering what would come next.
Gwinnett sent a team of five rescue-trained firefighters to Atlanta who helped search the lofts in Cabbagetown for survivors, said Capt. Thomas Rutledge of the Gwinnett fire department.
Through the weekend, he and a few other officers tracked the storms as they moved across the area. Gwinnett County was largely spared, but area residents and public safety officials have experienced nature’s wrath before.
In 1998, a tornado with estimated winds up to 112 mph left a path of damage 19 miles long and a half-mile wide, beginning just northeast of Perimeter Mall in DeKalb County and extending into Gwinnett County.
Should it happen again, the county is prepared.
Disaster preparedness falls mainly on Gwinnett’s relatively new homeland security department.
The county has six full-time and two part-time emergency management employees and a $577,000 operating budget in 2008, said Greg Swanson, the county’s emergency services coordinator.
“We strive to develop emergency capabilities that can be used for incidents of many types,” Swanson said. “Because it can never be determined with 100 percent accuracy what threat or hazard will occur, it is important to build capabilities that can be applied to a wide variety of incidents.”
During a natural disaster alert, the county puts fire engines and ambulances on alert around the county, Rutledge said. A fire that might normally merit three or four engines will draw only one or two engines when the alert is up, he said.
Many cities in the county have mutual aid agreements and follow the county disaster plan.
Loganville has a city plan for natural disasters. A command post is set up at the Loganville Police Department. Public works helps to clear roads and route traffic. Schools, local churches and sites outside of the city including a pavilion in Walton County have been designated as potential shelters.
Loganville also participates in emergency response plans developed by Gwinnett and Walton counties because the city is located in both counties. The city’s emergency preparedness plan reflects language in both of the county emergency plans. Loganville police would contact the county in which the disaster has occurred for support.
“If we had a tornado the magnitude that hit in Atlanta, we don’t have the resources to deal with that by ourselves,” said operations commander Dick Lowry with the Loganville Police Department.”
We are fairly well covered in Walton and Gwinnett.”
If disaster struck Snellville, police would establish an incident command post and log 12-hour shifts.
Public works would help to clear roads and offer other support. Local schools and churches would be used as shelters.
City officials would be in communication with the county to get the support the city needs in a natural disaster, police Chief Roy Whitehead said.
Norcross has had an alert system in place for more than 10 years, said police Chief Dallas Stidd, whose department handles disaster preparedness for the city.
Eight sirens cover the 4.5-square-mile city and beyond, Stidd said, and let residents know of any emergency in the area.
A series of prerecorded messages can accompany the alert, if people need to know specific information, he said, or officers can use the system to make live announcements when warranted.
“Any kind of disaster,” Stidd said, “man-made or natural, we have an alert system that we’ll set off in that event.”
Duluth also relies on a system of sirens to warn residents of pending weather or emergency alerts, City Administrator Phil McLemore said.
The Berkeley Lake Emergency Management Agency, so named so its acronym would rhyme with FEMA and GEMA (it’s known as BLEMA), is actually a citizen committee that has focused on getting the tiny city up to speed with a plan to handle any disasters.
The city hired a consultant to help create two emergency preparedness sheets for residents, which were printed out on both sides of 11-by-14-inch sheets, laminated, and mailed to each home.
Lilburn also participates in Gwinnett County’s emergency preparedness plan.
Local schools and other designated buildings would be used as shelters in the case of natural disasters.