Region embraces boundaries; disasters know none

“We cleared off Johnson Ferry and Abernathy, and we cleared off Roswell Road into Roswell,” the city’s mayor, Rusty Paul said last week in an address to business leaders. However, he said, “it wasn’t a priority for Cobb and Roswell, so while we could get people to the river, we couldn’t get them across. It wasn’t their fault; we just had not coordinated.”

His conclusion: “We have to work regionally together to solve some of the major problems.”

The question is: How? Even if Gridlockalypse did spawn a consensus for better coordination in times of genuine emergency, who has the mandate, the resources and the will to tackle the job?

It’s an endeavor that, at some point, runs up against one of voters’ oft-demonstrated core values: local autonomy. (Sandy Springs, like several other recently created cities, owes its very existence to that value.)

Some local officials see no need for additional regional emergency planning. “I think it starts at the local level,” said Greg Swanson, Gwinnett County’s emergency management director. “I think our local planning and our connection to (the Georgia Emergency Management Agency), that’s our legal course in a disaster.”

Even among those who do see a gap, good will and good intentions are not the issue. Sandy Springs and Roswell have a mutual aid agreement. So do all the state’s 159 counties and some 500 other cities.

“We have a very cooperative state of affairs in our state, in which local communities not only welcome state assistance but they want to collaborate,” said Gov. Nathan Deal.

After the January storm paralyzed metro Atlanta, Deal asked 33 of the region’s biggest players in emergency response to suggest reforms. At the panel’s first meeting last month, two major companies credited with responding well to the January and February storms delivered a blunt message: centralization.

“It is absolutely critical that everybody knows that somebody’s in charge and they know who that person is,” Anthony Wilson, executive vice president for Georgia Power told Deal’s task force. “Absent that, you can’t be sure that what you just decided is actually going to get done.”

Georgia Power has eight regions with separate resources and leaders, Wilson said, but during emergencies, the company shifts to a centralized command.

Wilson was followed by Gil West, Delta Air Lines new chief operating officer, who echoed his comments.

But even the largest and most decentralized company is nothing like a region with dozens of independent local governments and hundreds of government departments. When the task force met for the second time Tuesday to begin brainstorming recommendations, the problem of who’s in charge bubbled up yet again, with no clear answer. And well before that, Deal took the idea of a regional boss for times of crisis off the table.

“To commandeer, in effect, local resources that local taxpayers have paid for and they have elected officials to be responsible for, I don’t think is something that is justified,” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in an interview.

When it comes to navigating the tension between coordination and autonomy, metro Atlanta is just like every other major metro area — only more so. With no fewer than 9 counties and 101 cities (and potentially many more, depending on how you define the region), it’s simply more fragmented.

At the other end of the spectrum are cities such as Houston and Phoenix, which have 36 percent and 35 percent, respectively, of all residents in the “metropolitan statistical areas” defined by the U.S. Census. The city of Atlanta, by contrast, has only 8 percent. Even at the county level, metro Atlanta doesn’t have one or two dominant counties, as there are in, say, Los Angeles or Dallas-Fort Worth.

Task force member and MARTA CEO Keith Parker has worked in several cities, and each has had a blizzard or 100-year ice event during his tenure, he told the AJC.

“The challenge here (in emergency response) is much greater than any place I’ve lived,” Parker said. “And it’s simply because there are just so many jurisdictions.”

That doesn’t mean better coordination is impossible, according to people who study such issues. It just means change may not to be quick or easy — especially, if it’s not clear, once Deal’s task force delivers its recommendations and disbands, who is accountable for moving the ball forward.

The state does not lack for agencies tasked with emergency preparation and response, but they’re something of a patchwork, too.

The Georgia Emergency Management Agency is responsible for disaster preparation statewide, but it doesn't generally lead Atlanta region meetings, training or drills. The Emergency Management Association of Georgia hosts monthly regional conference calls or meetings, attended by GEMA's regional coordinator, Sheri Russo.

The latter organization bills itself as "Georgia's first line of response for multi-jurisdiction response." But its website lists no events for the last 11 months, and gives a phone number that was disconnected when a reporter tried calling it this week. (The group has done significant work in coordinating responses to wildfires, responders say.)

UASI counts Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, Gwinnett and the city of Atlanta as members, and Cherokee, Douglas, Fayette, Henry and Rockdale counties have participated in UASI-sponsored exercises with them. EMAG and GEMA define the region as nine counties (all those counties minus Cherokee) — plus, since they were grandfathered in to the county system, Smyrna and Forest Park.

“All of these various agencies do intersect at some point,” said GEMA spokesman Ken Davis.

When a crisis hits, Russo takes on a role she describes as “the Amazon.com for resources.” That’s where GEMA showed its strength in the recent storm, as an AJC reporter watched GEMA staff route region-wide calls for supplies, troopers, personnel and more.

One notable agency is not in the mix: The Atlanta Regional Commission, which plays a major role in areas such as transportation planning, doesn’t engage in disaster preparedness.

“We’re probably a bit more fragmented than other metro areas,” said William Waugh, an emergency planning expert who teaches at Georgia State University. “Here we don’t like central planning.”

Neither does Texas, another state that cherishes independence and seeks to minimize government intrusion.

But in Texas, individual jurisdictions don’t have to sign onto mutual aid pacts, said Molly Thoerner, the director of emergency preparedness for the Dallas area’s North Central Texas Council of Governments. Everyone is automatically covered by such an agreement unless they opt out.

A more important distinction, perhaps: the North Central Texas COG, which functions much like the ARC, also plays a major role in regional disaster planning.

While the Dallas area also works closely with its own UASI group, “in this highly fragmented environment, the role of a council of governments is very important,” said Simon Andrew, a professor of public administration at the University of North Texas who studies collaboration.

The council’s regional emergency department was set up after 9/11 to pool resources, Thoerner said: “Everybody understands we can’t afford for everybody to have their own hazmat team.”

The local governments in the group agreed not to compete against each other for emergency planning grants, but to work together to win grants that will benefit the region, said Midlothian Police Chief Carl Smith.

A committee Smith chairs — composed of three dozen emergency managers, first responders and other staff from counties and cities, and the state and a university — meets once every two months. In-person attendance is usually required, and working committees meet in between.

Smith said the region’s emergency responders work and train together so frequently that they know each other’s abilities and resources like co-workers. “It’s been great.”

In metro Atlanta, GEMA requires each county to have regular training exercises, but individually rather than as a group.

While the ARC has done some spot work on emergency management, it doesn’t work on it now, said director Doug Hooker.

“Our local governments have never asked us to do that,” said Hooker. “And why? I can’t tell you … I could see it being a natural kind of fit. But we only go where people want us to go.”