(The Center Square) – The House Disaster Mitigation and Resilience Study Committee is recommending a new state Office of Resilience to help Georgia recover from disasters.
The committee’s recommendations also include upgrading emergency response systems to Next Generation 911, which will allow local 911s to transfer calls to other agencies. Residents will also be able to communicate with 911 electronically.
The Office of Resilience would be attached to the Georgia Emergency Management Agency, known as GEMA, according to Rep. Clint Crowe, R-Jackson, the committee’s chairman. The agency did an “exceptional job” during Hurricanes Helene and Milton, he said during the committee’s final meeting on Tuesday.
“This is really to give them some more support and kind of continue those efforts long-term,” Crowe said of GEMA. “The resilience office and the chief resilience officer would be tasked with creating a state resilience plan and trying to pull all of these valued resources together.”
The Next Generation 911 system would replace current legacy systems, but it would come with a cost. The committee is recommending a study of 911 fees and the long-term local government funding of the system.
“There are going to be some places as we heard that are already to go,” Crowe said. “They have the equipment and technology in place and if we went to the Next Gen 911 system they would be ready to go day one. There’s some other places that they’re having a hard time now even operating the legacy 911 system.”
The committee also recommended revisions to the state building code to require medical facilities such as nursing homes to have secondary power sources. Existing facilities would be required to install power transfer systems within a five to 10-year period.
“Those secondary power sources are more affordable than ever,” said Rep. J. Collins, R-Villa Rica. “I think as far as lightening the burden to our first responders in a natural disaster where you don’t have to evacuate 50, 60, 70 people because of a lack of power, I think it will go a long way in making sure we’re proactive.”