Floyd County officials had a chance Wednesday to take a breath and do a quick evaluation of the response to Monday’s damaging storms.

Emergency personnel were on the scene of major impact areas, like near the destroyed Silver Creek Mini Mart on Ga.

101, soon after the first calls came in, and work crews spread throughout the southern part of the county to clear fallen trees from more than two dozen roads.

“We came through OK,” Floyd Public Works Director Michael Skeen said. “There were some things we could have done a little quicker, but there are always things you can do a little better.”

He said that crews would probably continue to haul away debris from the storm for the rest of the week.

An after-event meeting is planned sometime next week for the involved agencies to go through debriefing about the response and performance during the storm and its aftermath.

One of the subjects that will be discussed, according to Floyd County Emergency Management Agency Director Scotty Hancock, is the ways they can integrate more training on the new communication system’s radios.

They’re looking into reports of a radio assigned to the Rome-Floyd Fire Department having a loss of function due to getting wet during the height of the storm.

“Any loss of function or fuzziness in sound lasted just a few seconds and was very minor,” Assistant County Manager Noah Simon said. “They never lost complete communication with other personnel.”

Simon said that the special dust covers on the radios make them virtually waterproof but that these have to be removed in order to hook up hands-free headsets to them.

If operators do not replace the cover and water gets into a radio, there can be a problem.

Hancock said that of the recorded 8,400 push-to-talk calls made on the communication system during a three-hour period Monday evening, only the one report of muffled traffic for one transmission was made.

“We’ve got to continue training for all agencies,” Simon said. “This system is very different from the old system and it will take time for people to become comfortable with it.

“Overall though, the system performed flawlessly.”

The storm provided an example of how the new communication system provides its own uninterrupted power source when three of the towers lost power.

The on-site generators at each tower came on immediately and the people using the system had no indication that it happened.