[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to First Friday with Georgetown County.
I'm Jackie Broach and I am very happy to probably reintroduce you to my good friend Lauren Wallace. Lauren is our brand new emergency manager, but he is not brand new to Georgetown County.
He worked for us in our parks and recreation department previously and was heavily involved in emergency services and emergency management back then.
He abandoned us and went to Horry county for a while to work with their emergency management department and we just stole him back, which I am extremely happy about. So welcome home, Lauren.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: Well, thank you, Jackie. I'm glad to be home.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: So talk with us a little bit about why you came back and what's in your future here at Georgetown County.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: So miss home. Right. You know, Georgetown has become home and really miss the camaraderie. And Jackie, as you said, you know, work for Parks and Rec prior to going to the independent Republic of Horry county, where I worked actually under a previous Georgetown county admin, Emergency management director, Samuel Hodge.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Another good friend.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: Yep. So went to ORI and went up there and I guess you could say I got some additional training in emergency management. But it was just time to time to come back home and I'm excited for the opportunity.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: Well, I know you were trained by the best since you trained under Sam.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely concur with that.
So excited. You know, this is a good time to get started. Right. You know, we're only a couple months away from hurricane season, so a lot of preparations are underway and we've hit the ground running, so.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: Okay.
Well, tell me a little about what we're expecting for hurricane season. I know it's still kind of early, but.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: Yeah, it is. But 2026 hurricane season outlook from Colorado State University. We're looking right around 13 named storms are in the forecast. So it's slightly like one storm below average. So I think the average is 14.
That. And they're forecasting six hurricanes.
Again, average is seven. And two of those are forecast to be major Hurricanes. Average is 3. I don't know if you can kind of see a trend, but we're. We're a little bit below average. That's right. And that's because there's forecasted to be an El Nino year, potentially a super El Nino year. So conditions may or may not be that all that favorable for a lot of storm development. However, Fingers crossed. But the, the one thing that we want everybody to remember is it only takes one. It only takes.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: Sam has told me that so many times. I know where you got that from.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: Absolutely. And so we always have to be prepared, we always have to be watching because it only takes one.
[00:03:04] Speaker B: So again, it's a little early, but what would you tell our viewers here as far as what they should be doing right now to get prepared?
[00:03:12] Speaker A: So the very first thing is, is have a plan.
Have a plan. So know your risk. So we in emergency management, hurricanes, we're getting into hurricane season and, and that's something we want everybody to plan and prepare for. However, we're susceptible to a lot of hazards throughout the year and so we want an all hazard approach. So everything begins with a plan. We have a plan as the county, we have an emergency operations plan and so we want individuals to have a plan as well. So know what you're going to do in the event something occurs. Know your zone. Go to South Carolina Emergency Management Division's website, know your zone, hurricane preparedness or Georgetown County's Emergency Management's webpage which links to that South Carolina Emergency Management Division's website where you can type in your address. Find out if you're in an evacuation zone, if it's an A, B or C zone. And as a reminder, Those zones changed 2024 following the updated hurricane evacuation study that was done across the state. So know your zone, identify your evacuation location. So if you're in a zone, have a plan. If where you get to the point where there's an evacuation ordered issued by the governor, you know, know your route, know where you're going. So we will have shelters potential. If we have an evacuation, we will have shelters within the county.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: The shelter is not the most comfortable place to stay though. So if you have other options, that's probably what you want to plan for. And you don't have to wait for an evacuation order to be called. Right. If you wanted to miss out on all of the evacuation traffic and you have Aunt Sally who's in Columbia. Columbia. Well, it might just be a good time to go and visit Aunt Sally. Right?
[00:04:54] Speaker A: That's exactly right. And so that's what we tell everybody. So a shelter, you know, that's the lifeboat. It's not a cruise ship. You know, you're not going to have necessarily all the amenities that you would normally have.
[00:05:03] Speaker B: So, and no pets.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: And, and we, you need to make a plan for your pets. So that's one of the things that we have to, you know, keep in mind as, as we're, we're going through those processes but you hit the nail on the head. So if you've got family inland throughout the state, plan on visiting Family.
And if you can or if you have nowhere else to go, absolutely go to the shelter but have a plan and know what your evacuation location is. And again, you do not have to wait on that evacuation order. If you feel uncomfortable, you absolutely can choose to self evacuate.
[00:05:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:43] Speaker A: Even if you're in a zone or not. Yeah.
[00:05:46] Speaker B: And we know that these storms can be unpredictable. I mean some of the worst damage we had was from Tropical storm Joaquin. Right.
That one was not forecast to be a big deal but it ended up slowing down and it just dropped tons of water on us and we ended up with what did they call it? The 100 year flood.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: Yeah. So the historic floods of 2015. Very familiar with and you know that come from as a result of a tropical system. And that's another thing to consider. You know, there's a lot of cascading impacts or consequences to hurricanes. There's a lot of potential impacts that can occur as a result of these systems. No two storm is storms are the same.
So you mentioned Joaquin which you know, resulted in the historic flooding of 2015.
We've had tropical systems that have, you know, created as much damage or it just may look different than you know, CAP 1 storms.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: And of course you can find more information about what to have in your emergency kit and everything on our website.
But what, what do you think is essential for people to, to have in their, their go kits?
[00:07:02] Speaker A: All right, so there's yes, you can find a list on our website but first and foremost actually have a kit. So the very first thing that goes along with having a plan, everybody, their documentation, so all kind of important documents in a location that's safe and secure and those protected.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: Waterproof.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: Waterproof, yes, something that they can grab with them. So post event, you know, and take it if they, they're evacuating or it's in a secure location when they need to get to it. So that's you know, bank account information, vital documents, vital records, birth certificates, you know, insurance paperwork, you know, all of that information you want to have at your fingertips. Yeah, well some of that may be available online, you know, but keep in mind you might not be able to access it. Right. So you want to have. That's a good start to a kit right there in and of itself. And then the second thing is food, water if you're, you're outside of that evacuation zone or you're, if you're going
[00:08:05] Speaker B: to ride it out.
[00:08:05] Speaker A: If you're going to ride it out which if you're in an evacuation zone and an order is given for that zone. We highly recommend that you know, you, you, it is a mandatory evacuation that you, that you leave. But if you're outside the evacuation zone, somewhere inland, the county and you're choosing to ride out the storm, you need to have food and water for three days at least. And that's not just for you, but that's for everybody in your household as well as your pets. That's right. You have to consider your pets in this.
So food and water alternative source of light. So do you have battery powered flashlights? You know, in a pinch. Yep. Candles are, are okay. But the thing with candles is, is they have the potential to create an additional hazard. Right. So if you have an open flame, again, it's not Dover. So battery powered flashlights, lighting source, keeping your phone charged, extra batteries, extra batteries and battery, you know, backups or battery packs for, for phones and electronic devices. So you can still get important, critical information. But understanding that, you know that depending on the impact of the storm, you may or may not have access to Internet or to cell phones or WI fi, you know, all of that.
So keep that in mind. We recommend a good NOAA weather alert radio, you know, battery powered, where you can still receive, you know, vital communication from our weather service partners.
So all of those things are good foundation for a kit. And then you want to make sure that you have general first aid supplies.
When we talk about post storm stuff, do you got work gloves? Do you got protective glasses? If you're going out to remove tree limbs or debris around your home after the storm, you want to make sure that you're still taking steps to protect yourself as you're doing that.
Because within any event, one of the things that we don't want to do is we don't want to create additional issues. We don't want to stress the system any more than is already there.
[00:10:09] Speaker B: Yeah, you don't want to make it through the storm and then end up riding to the hospital and ambulance missing some fingers or you know, with an eye injury because you were not geared up appropriately when you were trying to clean up the debris.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: That's right. That's right. Yeah. So again, for us, what we tell everybody is know your zone, identify your evacuation location and your evacuation plan, build your kit. So all those things we just talked about, plan for your pets, you know, plan for your pets, have an idea of what you're going to do for them and then identify trusted sources of information.
So, you know, one of the key things as we approach hurricane season is know where you're getting your information from
[00:10:56] Speaker B: Jimmy Bob on Facebook might not be the best source of information.
[00:11:00] Speaker A: That's right. Yeah. You want to make sure you're getting it from, you know, local, local news outlets, reputable local sources.
[00:11:08] Speaker B: Georgetown county is a reputable source who will give you all of the information.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: That's exactly right. And our federal partner, state partners. You know, one of the things that I'd love to give a plug for is South Carolina Emergency Management Division has an emergency management or emergency manager app. And so maybe we can link that in this podcast description. But that is a great, great app. So you can actually look up shelters in the event that they're open. So all a lot of information's at your fingertips. So you can look up those shelters. You can actually the know your zone, you know where you type your address in that we were talking about earlier, it tells you if you're an evacuation zone or not. That's in there. So a lot of great features in there, as well as how to put, how to build a kit so you can actually go and checklist and make a checklist for your own kit, emergency kit in that app. And so great, great source of information.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: Wonderful. Well, as we move closer to the start of hurricane season, will residents have an opportunity to maybe see you out and about, doing talks and meet you and ask you any questions?
[00:12:15] Speaker A: Absolutely. So our goal is to get out and, you know, inform the public and inform everybody. We would love to work with, you know, our faith based organ, faith based organizations, nonprofit organizations, homeowners associations. Anybody who wants to have a hurricane talk would love to come out and speak with them and speak with groups. So yes, ma'.
[00:12:40] Speaker B: Am. Wonderful. So if you have an opportunity for Lauren to come out and talk to your community or your organization, reach out to us. We'll send Lauren out and make sure you tell them. Welcome home, Lauren. We are so happy to have you back and I know that we could not be in better hands.
[00:12:56] Speaker A: Well, thank you. Glad to be back.
[00:12:58] Speaker B: Our next guest is Randy Akers who is a staff member in our IT department, but he is also part of our public information team. And Randy is normally behind the camera for this podcast. He does our recording for this as well as our live streams for county council and the planning commission. If you've got watched those, he's the one who's responsible.
You are also our webmaster. So, Randy, there are a couple of exciting things that are about to happen with Georgetown County's website. Can you tell us a little about what is going on?
[00:13:29] Speaker C: Yes. Our website is about to undergo a period of major change.
A couple of things are going to be changing. First is our actual website address.
For the longest time we have been gtcounty.org on the Internet. Before that it was I think georgetowncountysc.org and then we shortened it up a little bit.
We're going to add a couple of letters back to it and make it gtcountysc.gov the reason for the move to a.gov domain is because anybody can sign up for a.org domain on their own. I could go tomorrow and sign up for a very similar looking domain that looks like gtcounty.org but maybe I've changed a letter somewhere and and it looks just enough alike to. To where somebody who doesn't know any better. GT country.org GT country.org Something like that.
That's what a lot of scammers do is they'll create a very similar looking web address to try and trick people into getting money, sending money for a scam or something like that. The good thing about a.gov domain is that those are very tightly controlled by CISA. I can't remember the exact acronym for what that stands for but it's the, the federal level cybersecurity agency.
They are the ones that process all the dot gov domain name registrations and they verify each and every agency that applies for a.gov domain.
[00:14:50] Speaker B: So to give them parents.
[00:14:51] Speaker C: Yes, you got to give everything to them for. For that.
So it's a very tightly controlled list of who can have those domains. So. So that's hopefully going to help us increase our security stance with the general public. So when they see that gtcountysc.gov they know that the communication is coming from us. They don't have to worry that it's some kind of scammer or something trying to get their. Their information or trying to get them to send money or anything like that.
[00:15:17] Speaker B: And we do have major issues with that in several of our departments. I know the sheriff's office is always talking about various scams. Oh, your granddaughter is in jail. Send money. We have a number of them that happen in the planning department frequently. So this is something that we're always guarding against and hopefully this will just be one more tool to help us in that fight.
[00:15:38] Speaker C: Yes. So we are asking people to update their bookmarks for that.
The new URL is going to go live on May 7th along with the second part of our website upgrade.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: Let me also mention that our email addresses are also going to change along with that web domain change, they will all now
[email protected] Correct. Which is going to take a long time to get used to saying I almost did the GT County.
[00:16:05] Speaker C: Yeah, we will obviously maintain our old web address and our old email addresses for a period of time after that transition. We obviously don't want it to just be a hard switch and we're all on the new, the new domain. So you can still use the gtcounty.org web address and email addresses for a short period of time after. I think it's going to be at least six months, maybe a year. I don't think we've nailed down the exact date yet, but there will be a period of transition.
But going back to the second part of our website upgrade, we are actually redesigning the website.
[00:16:38] Speaker B: More of a refresh.
[00:16:40] Speaker C: We call it a redesign, but it's more of we're, we're just kind of putting on a new coat of paint. We're not like opening up a room or anything like that.
So we have gone back and looked at some more current web design practices.
We've taken account, are taken into account our analytic usage for the website for what people are most accessing.
And when we first redesigned our website back in 2020 with Civic plus, as part of that contract, we are allowed a redesign or a refresh of the website every five years.
So we are in that refresh period right now and we've tried to make the website more reflective of what we have seen people actually looking for on the website.
For example, I was surprised when we looked at our analytics to see that the forfeited land commission is in the top 10 of, of what people are looking at on the website. I never would have thought, I'll be
[00:17:36] Speaker B: honest, I don't think I even knew we had a forfeited land commission. But apparently a lot of people do and they are interested.
[00:17:41] Speaker C: Yep. So a lot of people want to know what's going on with our forfeited land commission. I, I'm not. I haven't even looked into exactly what it is they do. I think it's where they, they sell similar to our tax sale land that has been forfeited for some reason. So that has been a very popular thing that people are into. So we're reflecting that by, on our new website, our new design, there's going to be a link to that item right there on the main page so that they don't have to click the top menu bar to look for it. They don't have to search for it. It's just right there on the main page.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: People using that may actually not like that. It may increase competition for the forfeited land that I, I guess, yeah, maybe.
[00:18:18] Speaker C: I'm not sure.
Another thing that, that we thankfully, I guess this is a good thing that we, we have a lot of interest in on our website is marriage licenses. Apparently we have a lot of people looking to get married in Georgetown county.
[00:18:30] Speaker B: So felicitations.
[00:18:31] Speaker C: So the application for a marriage license is always a top viewed thing on our website. So we've placed a link to that information on our main page as well. So just kind of going through, looking at what people are doing, what they're looking for, for what they're viewing on our website and trying to present that information front and center on the new design.
[00:18:48] Speaker B: And it will also just be a little prettier.
[00:18:51] Speaker C: Yes, we have again, we've looked at what some other agencies across the country are doing with their current web design.
Try and make it not, not look exactly the same as what other people are doing. But you know, go into one website and say, oh, I like what they're doing with this part or go into another and say I like what they're doing with this part. And kind of trying to meld that all together into something that works for us.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: And we're also bringing some external websites in. Yes, right.
[00:19:16] Speaker C: When we, when we last redesigned our website, we had a bunch of departments that had decided because our old website prior to 2020 was not very user friendly, they had decided to go out and procure their own departmental websites.
We didn't quite have the capacity to integrate those into our new website back in 2020 with, you know, I'm sure nobody remembers what all was going on in 2020. I'm sure we were just, you know, wasting our time and not doing anything at all with anything else happening that year. But we didn't quite have the capacity to do that at that time. This time we do have the capacity. So we have already integrated the external websites for our Stormwater department, our economic development department and our airport into the new county website.
Post the go live of the refreshed design. There are also websites for the Midway Fire Rescue Department and the county Fire EMS Department that are currently external and we're going to bring those in as well.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: And Parks and Recreation is also going to have sort of a. I don't know if expanded presence is right, but they're going to have a different look
[00:20:23] Speaker C: as well, thankfully, thanks to our new Economic development director. Kelly Robertson Slagle we were able to secure a $10,000 grant from Santee Cooper to redesign several sections of the website to give them their own unique look and feel. And that's, I think it was a marketing oriented grant to help better market Georgetown county outside the area.
So there's four sections of our website which is going to be the airport and Economic Development and then additionally our Parks and Recreation department and our library who are going to kind of get their own customers look and feel to their their part of the website that's going to allow us to have give them their own main page similar to the county's homepage and then allow us to kind of bump some of their information up on their main page and make it easier for people to find what they're looking for for those particular departments.
Those departments were selected Economic Development and Airport obviously because they are major revenue generators for the county.
But Parks and Recreation, you know, a lot of people probably remember that they've hosted several Bassmaster events.
Recreation, tourism is a big thing in this area. So we wanted to get them a refreshed design. And then our library is just doing so many things these days with the events that they have going on.
[00:21:39] Speaker B: Our library always has something going on and for that matter so does Parks and Recreation. They have so many activities and events for, for visitors as well as local locals. We definitely don't want to forget the local people because that is who we are here to serve.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:21:52] Speaker C: So that, that was part of the reason why we had the library be that fourth one to come in here because. Or to get the refreshed design because not only are they doing events that are going to bring in people from outside the area, it's just important to help get their information more, more easily into the hands of our local folks.
[00:22:07] Speaker B: Absolutely. Well, anything else Randy?
[00:22:11] Speaker C: That's pretty much it. We just again want to remind people that the scheduled go live date or launch date for all of this is going to be May 7th. That's going to be both for the new URL gtcountysc.gov as well as for the refreshed design for the main website and those departments that I mentioned earlier, we're going to flip the switch, I think at about 11 o' clock that morning and then after that over the rest of the day and thereafter. People should start to see the new design and new URL be the default as they visit our website.
If people have any issues, we would certainly encourage them to reach out to us. There is a contact form on our website that they can utilize to let us know, hey, I'm trying to do this and it's not working appropriately for me. Please give us that feedback. So that way if there is any sort of issue with the new design, we can go in and tweak it and make it work the best as we can for people. We definitely want to make our website as easily as easily accessible as it can be to the general public because Georgetown county is very focused on getting information into the hands of the citizens that it serves and we want to make sure that people are getting that information as best as they can.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: Well, Randy and I are definitely very excited about these changes and we hope that when they go live on May 7, you will be as well.
Randy, thank you for your time and for everything you do to make government more accessible to the public.
[00:23:33] Speaker C: Thanks for having me.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: That's all for this month's first Friday with Georgetown County. Thanks so much for joining us. As always, I'd like to bring you a list of important events to note coming up this month.
There are several meetings scheduled for County Council chambers this month. The Zoning Board of Appeals will meet on Thursday, May 7th at 5:30pm County Council will meet twice this month on Tuesday, May 12th and Tuesday, May 26th.
Both meetings are also scheduled for 5:30pm lastly, Planning Commission will meet on Thursday, May 21st. If you can't make it to County Council or Planning Commission meetings, be sure to watch our live
[email protected] gtcountysc the Board of Elections and Voter Registration will meet at 5:30pm on Wednesday, May 13 at the office of the of Elections and Voter Registration on Hazard Street.
The Library Board will meet at 5:30pm on Thursday, May 21st at the Georgetown Branch on Cleveland Street.
Speaking of the Library as usual, there are tons of great events happening this month at your local library branch, but we'd like to bring attention to one important event series which is bringing South Carolina's Revolutionary War story to life.
A Glorious Cause, South Carolina and the American Revolution will feature presentations by storytellers, musicians and historians at each of our local libraries from now through July. Check out the library's calendar on our website for a full list of events and be sure to join us at one of these important presentations.
Lastly, as a reminder, county offices, the Landfill and recycling centers will be closed on Monday, May 25 and observance of Memorial Day.
For more events, please Visit our website gtcounty.org soon to be beginning May 7th. Gtcountysc.gov Join us next month for another first Friday with Georgetown.
