The Emergency Management Division of the Columbus Fire and Emergency Medical Services is responsible for the overall preparedness of this city government for emergencies or disasters that we may face.  This division maintains and operates the Emergency Operations Center where city leaders and public safety department heads would meet and conduct response and recovery operations in the event of a major emergency or disaster.  The Operations Center is well secured and protected and provides ample communications equipment on various bands and frequencies allowing command level staff to monitor and direct response and recovery operation.

This division is responsible for several emergency plans that would be implemented if necessary.  Some of these plans are the, “Muscogee County Emergency Operations Plan”, “Mass Casualty Plan”, “Water Distribution and Sewer Waste Disposal Plan”, "Hazard Mitigation (Pre-Disaster) Plan", and the “Emergency Alert System Plan”.  Other plans supplement these operational plans and the planning function of this office.

The division is further charged with the public information and warning function.  In June 2003, we replaced our outdoor emergency warning siren system.  The new system consists of 47 outdoor emergency warning sirens placed strategically throughout Muscogee County and the system is capable of issuing 6 separate warning tones plus providing the ability to make voice announcements from individual sirens, any combination of sirens or through the entire warning siren system.  In the event of a major emergency or disaster this division would utilize the local media to disseminate information to the public in a timely manner.

The Emergency Management Division is further charged with the coordination of all State and Federal response resources in the event that they are needed and were to respond to this jurisdiction.

Individual readiness and family preparedness information is available on this web site and it is highly recommended that all families and individual take every action possible protect themselves and their families.  For further information contact the Emergency Management Division at 706-225-4072.