‘Georgia is a ticking time bomb:’ FEMA director urges hurricane prep in Savannah

April 19--As administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, former Savannah resident Brock Long is the nation's chief emergency manager.

But he wasn't savvy about his own disaster readiness when he first moved to an apartment on Wilmington Island in 1999 to take a job with the Georgia Emergency Management Agency as a state hurricane planner, he told a regional conference of emergency managers Wednesday at the Savannah International Trade and Convention Center.

"I threw everything I owned into an apartment in a Category 1 storm surge zone the day before the Hurricane Floyd evacuation," he said.

Growing up in inland North Carolina, Long understood the risk of hurricane winds, having experienced the wrath of Hurricane Hugo that downed trees and brought 10 days of power outages even that far inland. But he didn't understand storm surge. With Floyd approaching, Long said the "hand of God tapped his shoulder" and he volunteered to start his GEMA job two days early, driving to the emergency operations center ahead of the evacuation. It was a fortuitous move that prevented him from waiting "another 24-48 hours and (getting) stuck somewhere in Waycross in a Walmart parking lot."

"I was that person," Long said. "I was uninformed. I didn't understand the risk."

Even after a 2017 hurricane season in which Hurricanes Harvey, Maria and Irma brought widespread disaster to Texas and Puerto Rico, Brock's not sure Georgians understand the risk, either. Last year wasn't unprecedented in terms of hurricanes, he said. One year that was very similar, 1893, even impacted Georgia when "a major hurricane came right at this city where we're sitting," he said.

"I think Georgia is a ticking time bomb," he said. "I think you've got a complacent citizenry. I don't think they realize the Georgia coast got hit 14 times from 1850-1900."

Long, who served as Alabama's emergency director and as a vice president for an emergency preparedness consulting firm before President Donald Trump tapped him for the top FEMA job in June, urged the emergency managers to work together to combat what he called "hurricane and hazard amnesia."

Brock also told the conference what FEMA is doing to improve itself, including reducing the agency's complexity and building a culture of preparedness. To address the latter, FEMA is pushing for changes to federal law that will make 6 percent of funding that FEMA obligates as federal assistance dollars to be earmarked for pre-disaster mitigation. Studies indicate pre-disaster mitigation saves $6 for every dollar spent, he said.

"If the law changes there will be $2.5 billion for pre-disaster mitigation you guys have to figure out how to grab and use," he said. "We're talking about massive amounts of dollars to do real changes."

Chatham Emergency Management Agency Director Dennis Jones said his agency was learning from the other attendees, including how New Orleans does its evacuations of citizens who lack their own vehicles. New Orleans has plans to evacuate 18,000 citizens using buses and aircraft, Jones said.

Jones doesn't consider Chatham County residents "complacent."

"In our community with us going through Matthew and Irma I think people in our community they're well-educated and they understand what the threats to our community are," he said.

It's all about getting individuals ready, he said.

"That means looking at building codes to make sure we're not building in a location that's prone to significant flooding," he said. "When something is damaged building it back better so that it minimizes the impact of a future damage later on. Looking at ways we can improve that individual either in knowledge or in hazard mitigation so that they can sustain the effects of a disaster in the future."

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