Dr. J. Patrick O'Neal, M.D., Health Protection Director at DPH, compares notes with Charley English, Georgia Emergency Management Agency and Homeland Security director, prior to their presentations at the annual Emergency Management Agency conference in Savannah.

Promoting the cooperative efforts of emergency management and public health benefits each group and Georgia residents overall-this is especially true at times when numerous agencies are called on for disaster response.

That cooperation was at the heart of this year's annual Emergency Management Association of Georgia conference, held May 2-4 in Savannah. More than 50 topics were addressed by leading professionals in emergency management and public health. Concerns ranged from disaster mental health to regional coordinating of hospitals and mass fatality planning.
 
"I'm not grateful for Georgia having more than its fair share of disasters in recent years, but I am grateful to have learned from those disasters, and learned from those problems," said Dr. J. Patrick O'Neal, M.D., Director of Health Protection, during a presentation at the conference.

O'Neal cited the benefits of better communication, with responding agencies now speaking a common language, a situation he says did not exist years ago.
 

Tuscaloosa Mayor Walter Maddox describes how his city responded to the April 27, 2011 tornado at the annual Emergency Management Agency conference in Savannah. Nearly 1,000 people received hospital treatment that day even though some entrances were blocked by storm debris. One tornado missed the hospital by less than a quarter mile.

Keynote speaker Walter Maddox, mayor of Tuscaloosa, Ala.,  recounted how the community rose to the occasion on April 27, 2011 when tornadoes tore through the area, sending 900 people to DCH Regional Hospital.

"Cooperative efforts were seamless, thanks to everyone's ability to ignore political boundaries," Maddox said.

Georgia has had a low number of incidents in 2012 compared to recent years and this year has been a sharp contrast to 2011 so far.  However, as Georgia Emergency Management Agency and Homeland Security Director Charley English points out, "it only takes one."

"We all know it doesn't matter what the predictions are. It doesn't matter the day, the month or the year. We need to be ready the same," English said.

-Story by Eric Jens, DPH Communications