Essentially, it’s ALL about taking care of people.

It’s the whole purpose of County government, it’s the focus of Chatham Emergency Management Agency, and it’s evident from top to bottom.  You can see it writ large in the massive, complex workings of every Emergency Operations Center activation, when systems expertly planned out and refined over years of practice are mobilized to provide for every potential need during the course of a major emergency.  You can also see it at the simplest human level, when CEMA professionals who are working around the clock to anticipate and respond to those community needs, also take a few minutes to empty EOC trash cans just because they need to be emptied, or they cook up some grits and eggs with a smile for the night shift signing off after twelve hours and the day shift coming in with the first rays of the sun to take over for the next twelve.

During emergency events like the hurricanes our community is all too familiar with, that commitment to taking care of people shows up as rescues, transportation for evacuations, shelters, resource centers, public safety communications, recovery clean up or restorative funding.  During a more uncommon winter storm emergency, swiftly established public warming centers offered refuge from dangerous cold for residents who were either unhoused or who had a lack of heating.

“We’re trying to take care of individuals and populations out there.  We’re taking care of each other, and we’re taking care of our vendors and partners who work with us.” Emergency Management Specialist Steven Meyer is new to CEMA, but his post coordinating public health and human services and mass care during the winter storm has brought about a deep appreciation for the people and organizations who partner with CEMA and the County during emergencies.  The Salvation Army, The City of Savannah, The YMCA, missions, churches, and law enforcement agencies are always generous supporters of County emergency relief efforts. The Chatham Savannah Authority for the Homeless spearheaded the efforts to offer refuge from the freezing weather to anyone who needed it.

Steven came to CEMA just a few months ago after 13 years serving our community as an Animal Services Officer, so he brings with him that problem-solving approach.  “I focus on Here’s what’s needed, let’s get there.  Animal Services, in a lot of ways, is very reactive: there’s an issue, let’s fix it.”  He brings another useful skillset from an unusual source, too – his years of working with improv theater have given him locked-in listening and a nimble ability to pivot to work with whatever arises in the moment.  “When you’re fully engaged with people, you realize you’re there to address a specific thing.  What’s the goal?  In this case the goal is to provide a space for this population to get out of the cold, to make use of a partner facility and then return it in like new condition – just because we should.  I mean why do we exist? Why do humans organize in societies but to help each other?”

Steven’s counterpart on the night shift is just as passionate about this role and just as new to CEMA.  Emergency Management Specialist Tiffany Arant has been with CEMA only two months, but mentally she’s been here all her life.  An intense near-disaster experience when she was a small child set her on a laser-focused path to work in Emergency Management.  With a Masters in Emergency Management and experience working with USDA and with Emergency Management in Union County, NC, she made the leap to Chatham County and has hit the ground running.  Calm and centered, she’s on a mission.  “I’ve always been in government operations.  I started thinking very young that this is how we have to approach things.  With compassion.  With understanding.  And when you’re speaking with other government operations, you already have that base understanding, because you work in it day to day. . . so there’s absolutely no reason that we shouldn’t be able to have a human conversation and figure everything out.”

That compassion is deep-seated in her. “I think people are extremely vulnerable during any type of disaster.”  Even the fact that Chatham was setting up warming centers as opposed to shelters was a very considered response to the needs of a community about to be incapacitated by uncharacteristic cold.  Shelters have extensive official requirements that can’t be set up at a moment’s notice and that often can’t be sourced when the roads are impassable.  Warming centers are a timely response to the need to protect lives.  Even though the only specifications were four walls, a safe space, and maybe snacks and water, Tiffany and Steven worked with Savannah Fire to go the extra mile (over snow and ice) to get hot meals delivered from Salvation Army.  “If everybody’s helping out in any way they can, things are going to get done.  You know, do your job, but if there are other things that you can do in the meantime, why not?  I think everybody here is fundamentally caring.” 

It was her childhood brush with disaster, caught on an open beach as an unexpected tornado bore down on Tiffany and her family, that shaped her drive to help.  “The sirens were going off, and I remember my mom not knowing what to do.  My mom and my grandma grabbed my cousins and me and we had to go into a little bathroom right off of the shore. We were in stalls and we're covering our heads and you could hear the tornado just come by and the noise! -- it just feels like the world is being torn apart piece by piece and it completely scared me to death.  But when I started growing up and understanding why I was scared, it turned into motivation. It turned into I need to know why so I can make sure that if that ever happens again my mom knows exactly what to do so she feels safe.”

She continues, “You know I think that's what people are scared of, especially any disaster that comes through like this. I mean you can't control when it's going to come through. You can't control the intensity of it. But if you have the understanding and the knowledge of it, then you don’t feel powerless, and you can do your best to make sure you're safe and make your family safe. And I think that's my goal here at CEMA. I have worked probably since I was that little girl in that bathroom to get to here.”