Columbia County EMA Director Shawn Granato was recognized Tuesday, April 25 during the Community and Emergency Services Committee meeting for completing the Georgia Professional Emergency Management certification through the Georgia Emergency Management Agency/Homeland Security (GEMA/HS).
Granato, who has been director for over three years and with Columbia County Emergency Management Agency for just over five years, said it was nice to be recognized for his hard work.
“It’s kind of the culmination of all of the time and effort that you put into doing your job,” Granato said. “But you know, I worked for the federal government and for the Air Force and for Boeing and all kinds of different places, and I’ve never had leadership nearly as supportive as they are now. (County manager) Scott (Johnson), (assistant county managers) Glenn (Kennedy), Matt (Schlachter) and all the commissioners, if it weren’t for them enabling me to do what I want to do and to have the freedoms to run our shop like we do, I would’ve never been able to get this done. I have to give the credit to them and my team for allowing me to get it done.”
GEMA Field Coordinator Collin Hopf presented the award to Granato, stating there are 52 people out of all 159 counties in Georgia with this certification. To receive the certification, Granato had to meet a lot of requirements.
“There’s a lot of training requirements. He’s been doing training since I met him and he took over this roll…he did some exercises, he did some trainings, he did full scale with the school that helped him to apply for this as well,” Hopf said. “He’s got a masters degree from Homeland Security, multiple certifications. He attended conferences, and he went out of his way to do things normal emergency managers don’t do, like doing public safety preparedness fairs, outreach programs, speaking engagements, campaigns and just to be quite frank, Shawn is great to work with.”
As for the requirements to receive this certification, Granato said in Georgia, a person is required to have basic certification through the state, and Columbia County requires having advanced certification, which takes two-to-four years. The next step would be a professional certification.
“You have to have five years in the field.You have to have somebody willing to sponsor you. You have to have start-to-finish planning a full-scale exercise. You have to have hundreds of hours of formal education through the state of Georgia…you have to have contributions to the field like our public safety preparedness fair that we did this past weekend,” Granato said. “We’ve done a couple of those. We’ve done a few open houses, we had the weather radar…”
Committee Chair Alison Couch stated this certification is the highest level that Granato can achieve.
“He has accomplished this while encouraging his team to pursue their advance certifications and I really appreciate him leading by example,” Granato said.
Columbia County Board of Commissioner Chairman and committee member Doug Duncan said he was proud of Granato and the job he has done.
“We appreciate you, we appreciate all of your efforts and want to say thank you,” Duncan said.
Stephanie Hill is a staff writer covering Columbia County government for The Augusta Press. Reach her at stephanie@theaugustapress.com
