Storm puts ‘nice guy’ GEMA chief in spotlight
Georgia Emergency Management Agency head Charley English was in charge when tornadoes hit, heavy rains pushed the Chattahoochee beyond its banks, and a winter storm forced many of the 2011 inaugural celebrations for newly elected Gov. Nathan Deal to be canceled.
However, none of those natural disasters subjected the decades-long public servant to public criticism like Tuesday’s snow and ice, which left drivers stranded on gridlocked roads and children spending the night on school floors or buses. In the wake of all that, Georgia became the target of national ridicule.
English came to GEMA in 1996 and quietly moved up until 2006, when former Gov. Sonny Perdue named him head of the agency charged with coordinating local, state and federal responses to disasters. English is now also president of the National Emergency Management Association.
“He’s a nice guy. Good family man. Means well. Wants everybody to work together. He’s a consensus builder,” said former GEMA Director Gary McConnell, who hired English soon after leaving the Clayton County Police Department. English may be too nice, McConnell added.
The main criticism has been that the state was slow to react this week, even though weather forecasts warned of impending ice and snow for days. Much of the blame for that has been laid on English.
In his own defense at a Wednesday news conference with the governor, English said, “At 2 or 3 yesterday, it still had not gotten terrible on the roads. It wasn’t as gridlocked as it is now.”
Deal, standing next to him, disagreed. “I was on the roads at that point in time, and it was getting to be gridlocked,” the governor said.
It’s the head of GEMA who recommends to the governor when it’s time to declare a state of emergency. The GEMA director also opens the command center where all the agencies involved in responding to a disaster gather to coordinate.
None of that happened this week until the storm was firmly in place and gridlock already established. Attempts to get comment from English were unsuccessful Thursday afternoon; a spokeswoman for the agency said he was not “in.”
“The GEMA director has the responsibility and challenge to make it happen (when there are natural disasters) but the other agencies have the resources,” said McConnell, who ran GEMA for 12 years under Govs. Zell Miller and Roy Barnes and for three months under Perdue.
“It’s his responsibility to build a plan, exercise it, and get the buy-in from other state agencies to make it work,” McConnell said.
But, McConnell said of English, “He is not a political animal. He had very little political interest in all the time he worked for me. He just wanted to do his job.”
