Today we took the opportunity to address some of the emergency managers who were impacted by the recent flooding in Georgia.

Usually, our typical way that we���re activated is through the state coordinating officer or the governor coordinating with the federal coordinating officer to say, yes, we might need ESF-14 long-term community recovery assistance in our recovery.

They actually come in and assist the local government agencies, instead of dealing with individuals. They���ll come in and assist local governments, whether it be commissioners, your local emergency management agencies, law enforcement. They���ll get all those agencies together and do an assessment for the county, as do they need? What does the local government need to help the citizens?

We���re a facilitator in a lot of ways. A lot of these programs, under their own authority, are being delivered. But in a holistic way we can bring everybody together to address the problem. Maybe put other groups that might be able to support each other in long-term recovery and complement resources and just to facilitate addressing the needs that need to be addressed.

On the community level, on the local government level, it���s more technical assistance. Here in the metro Atlanta area, we have great folks working. It���s just someone to turn to and say, hey, I���ve got this issue do you know how to fix it? What FEMA bring in is people from different areas of the country to where they may have gone through a similar event and they can tell us this is how we did it and it worked well and we can tweak that to fit our needs. 

It���s been great because we can turn to them and say we haven���t had this situation before, what can we do? Between all of them, they���ve said hey, this particular government agency can come in and provide technical assistance; they can provide this type of resources to you at the government level to help you get through this. 

This has been a huge disaster for metro Atlanta. We haven���t seen this much water, I don���t think ever. The FEMA folks who���ve come in have really been professional, they���ve been great and they���ve really helped our communities.