"Emergency response is a partnership of everyone working together." This is the mantra Houston County EMA Director Clark Matthews, as well as numerous other emergency responders share.

Today's hurricane preparedness meeting at Wiregrass Electric in Hartford represented the partnership between first responders and the electric company, to better serve the public.

The second annual workshop discussed improvements from last year.

Matthews said,"From Fay to the March 28th floods the biggest thing we got out of fay flooding is the locations we can expect in Houston County that will flood and what lifesaving things we can do to mitigate that."

According to Brad Kimbrow, Director of Member Services at Wiregrass Electric, "the main priority is to continue building and strengthening relationships with our agencies, we're in it for the community as well as the safety of our citizens."

Last year Wiregrass Electric had only one response hot line, now they have more than seventy lines, eliminating a busy signal, and guaranteeing a call back.

"We do have an outage number it is toll free is manned 24/7 its its manned" said Kimbro.

Additionally, Wiregrass Electric displayed their new, completely paperless dispatch system, which in the past year has rapidly decreased power outage response time.

Geneva County EMA Director Margret Mixon said since Wiregrass Electric has held their annual workshop, putting faces to the names of other responders has helped her handle recent weather situations.