Elizabeth Czarick 1

Weekly Journal #2

KINS 4306

Monday, May 15th

I arrived at my internship site at 8:20 A.M. and was introduced to everyone that works in

the Office of Emergency Management (OEM). In total there are six people who work in the

office, and all but one person is “civilian positions.” The only non-civilian position is the

Sherriff’s Office Liaison, who is a Gwinnett County Sherriff who works as part of the OEM.

After my introduction, I got a tour of the facility and was issued a key card to give me access to

the various parts of the building I will need to go to over the course of my internship.

The first place I saw was the Emergency Operation Center (EOC.) The EOC is the main

base of operations in the event of an emergency activation and the building it is in was designed

to be one of the safest buildings in the county because of the need to have the emergency

management team and all 911 dispatchers come in for emergency activations, and potentially

stay for long periods of time.

The next place I saw was the Situational Awareness & Crime Response Center (SACRC.)

In this office, there are live video feeds that a couple people watch to help prevent and respond to

different situations, and the footage comes from police department cameras and any local

partners/ businesses that have given camera access to Gwinnett County.

After the SACRC, I saw the Amateur Radio Room. In the event of a total loss of cell

phone service and internet capabilities, amateur radio can be used to help hospitals, police, and

other first responders communicate with each other, since their regular radio frequencies would

also be disturbed. The entire OEM team are trained in amateur radio and would be considered the

liaisons between these groups to assist in relaying information to the various groups, such as
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available hospital beds, emergencies that need to be responded to, and relaying data to different

agencies.

The last place I saw in the building was the 911 Dispatch Center, and I was told that all

911 calls from surrounding areas, mainly Lawrenceville, Lilburn, Norcross, and Dacula are

routed and dispatched through the call center here.

After the end of my tour, I met with Corporal Leggett in the Office of Professional

Standards. In this meeting I signed my onboarding paperwork and provided the necessary

information to be fingerprinted on Tuesday, May 16th, as this position is in the Gwinnett County

Government. After the conclusion of that short meeting, I was shown the main platform that I

will be using throughout my time here called Web EOC. This is the main form of communication

that is used between the different departments around the state of Georgia, and up into the federal

government. Agencies such as the Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the Department

of Transportation (DOT) use Web EOC to communicate issues with other departments and

agencies on both local and state levels. For example, if a road is closed due to construction, the

DOT can put a statement out to all of the necessary agencies, such as first responders, to make

them aware that they cannot use a certain route when responding to emergencies.

After my lunch, I attended a conference with my supervisor that was hosted by the

Department of Public Health (DPH) talking about vulnerable populations. Also, how the DPH

and other agencies, such as the Office of Emergency Management, can team together to help

these vulnerable populations before, during, and after an emergency event. In this conference we

were given different examples of emergency scenarios, such as floods, heat waves, tornados, etc.,

and used those scenarios to make plans for the specified vulnerable populations. The conference

got done early so my first day was shorter than my typical days would be.
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Tuesday, May 16th

I arrived at the office at 8:25 A.M and was given time to sit and talk with the other

employees in the office. I spent this time asking questions about their different responsibilities

and how they think I may be able to assist them in any way over my few months here. There

were a couple of different people that said they may need my help with different projects, such as

Ashley who works on the hazard mitigation plans for the county.

Around 9:00 A.M. we went over to the warehouse where all of the emergency

management equipment is stored, and we assessed the pieces of equipment that needed to be

evaluated for safety checks. We took out three of the large tents, three generators and one of the

portable air conditioning units, and they showed me how to set up, use, and put away all of the

materials in the event of an emergency activation. The main thing these have been used for in the

past is vaccination events and at large community events for cooling stations. After we

completed inventory/ regulation checks, I got my fingerprints done to finish my onboarding and

to be added into the system, as my internship is at the Police Headquarters.

After my fingerprinting, I started working on ensuring certain people were in the Web

EOC system and if not adding them in. I started by ensuring that the county wide search team

was all added into the database, and then separated them into groups based on notification

priority levels and contact methods for the rest of the day.

Wednesday, May 17th

Today was a quite easy day, but it was taken up completely by one task. My main focus

for the day was taking websites that the OEM team have bookmarked in the past for different

projects and consolidating them on a Microsoft Excel sheet for them to be able to access easily.

This list consisted of over fifty different public and government agency related software’s that I
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organized into seven categories. Those categories included Weather, Search Team, Exercises,

Utilities, Training & Exercise, Hazard Mitigation, and Community Data/ Statistics. After I

categorized them, I added the links, the website name, and a brief description of each. The

descriptions ensure that the team does not have to search through each link to find what they are

looking for and that they can access them all with ease. This task took more time than I thought it

would, as I did not plan to spend the entire day on it, but there were many websites that were

very in depth and making a “brief” description was a challenge. The list is also growing as the

week goes on, so if someone finds another link that they want to be added they will add it to the

list, and I will organize it for them. This task was quite different from what I have done the past

two days, but it is nice to see that they are trying to be as organized as possible and that I was

able to help them achieve that.

Thursday, May 18th

This morning I finished working on the project from yesterday, and I was shown

Gwinnett County’s PPE stockpile that they have. This stockpile was created during the pandemic

when PPE was running low, and the county decided that in the case that something like the

Covid pandemic were to happen again, along with the PPE shortage, that there needed to be

enough PPE to last the essential county employees six months. After the PPE storage facility

visit, we left to head to Atlanta for a meeting with the Atlanta Urban Area Security Initiative

(UASI.) The main focus of today’s meeting was Critical Events and Special Operations, and

most of the meeting was spent talking about how to make the goals for each sector of the UASI

groups more measurable. The groups include active threats, hazmat, integrated preparedness

plans, SWAT, and explosive ordinance disposal (EOD.) Each county that is part of UASI had
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someone from each of these sections to add onto the current goals to make them measurable and

to ensure that the goals would actually be able to be met.

Friday, May 19th

Today was my favorite day of my internship so far, as I was able to attend a conference

that was hosted by the Region D Healthcare Coalition. At this conference there were multiple

different speakers from the Georgia Poison Center and the Southern Regional Disaster Response

System who spoke about radiation and what kinds we would most likely see in an immature

radioactive explosive in the Metro Atlanta area. We were also taught about the different

responses that would need to happen from different groups within the Region D Healthcare

Coalition and how each group could work together to assist each other’s communities. To end the

conference, we were given a scenario of an immature radioactive device explosion in Gwinnett

County and everyone who attended the conference answered questions and came up with

different solutions to reduce the number of people who were to be affected. We talked through

scenarios with the fire and police departments, as well as different hospital staff, healthcare

workers and emergency management agencies. Overall, this week was amazing, and I am

extremely excited for the rest of my internship.

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Hours Log:

Week Two:

Day Time In Lunch Time Out Hours

Worked
Monday, 8:20 A.M. 11:45 A.M- 3:10 PM 6.25
May 15th 12:20 P.M.
Tuesday, 8:25 A.M 11:40 A.M.- 4:30 P.M 7.58
May 16th 12:10 P.M.
Wednesday, 8:25 A.M. 12:30 P.M.- 5:00 P.M. 8.08
May 17th 1:00 P.M.
Thursday, 8:24 A.M. Working lunch 3:00 P.M. 6.6
May 18th
Friday, 7:45 A.M. Working lunch 3:15 P.M. 7.5
May 19th
Total Weekly Hours 36.01

Total Hours to Date 36.01