As Hurricane Dorian churned through the Bahamas earlier this week, Gov. Brian Kemp issued a blunt statement about the monstrous storm’s threat to coastal Georgia: “I would not take any chances with this one.”
The governor was focused on Hurricane Dorian’s course toward Georgia’s shoreline, but he might as well have been talking about his strategy for dealing with severe weather since taking office in January.
As Dorian grew into one of the most powerful Atlantic storms on record, the governor took a hyperactive approach.
He held a string of press conferences in Atlanta and along the coast, declared a state of emergency across a swath of southeast Georgia, ordered mandatory evacuations of residents near the shore and pleaded with those who ignored him to take caution.
“I cannot stress enough — this storm is still moving, it’s massive,” Kemp said at one of his press conferences on Monday, adding: “You may be on your own if first responders are unable to get to you.”
It was Kemp’s most serious weather test since he took office, but he offered an early glimpse of his strategy just weeks after he was sworn in. That’s when he ordered some state employees to stay home as wintry weather menaced Atlanta just before it hosted the Super Bowl.
That guarded strategy mirrors the approach that then-Gov. Nathan Deal took in the final years of his two terms in office, after poor communication and slow government response to the paralyzing 2014 ice storm became a humiliating disaster for the state.
That triggered a round of soul-searching — and a leadership shake-up — that paved the way for a revamped emergency response policy, promises of improved coordination and more money to buy road-clearing equipment.
It also gave rise to a philosophy that Kemp seems to have also embraced: It’s easier to roll back an overreaction to weather than to look caught off guard by a scaled-down response — even if it infuriates coastal residents who have been ordered to evacuate three times since 2016.
Kemp said he’s struggled with the tension, too, but would rather err on the side of caution.
“In this game, you do not want to be slow to the preparations or slow to the response. I think we’ve learned that before,” he said Wednesday, adding that his “battle-tested” administration has learned from a spate of severe weather emergencies.
“They’ve been through way too much of this, but we’ve got to hunker down and chop some wood and get through one more,” he added. “And that’s just the reality of what we’re in.”
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