Perth Amboy Office of Emergency Management

The mission of Perth Amboy OEM is to reduce loss of life and property and to protect our community and critical infrastructure from all types of hazards and disasters through a comprehensive, risk based program of mitigation, prevention, preparedness, response and recovery from threatened or actual natural disasters, acts of terrorism, or other man-made disasters, by coordinating and integrating all activities necessary to build, sustain, and improve the community resiliency. This is accomplished through partnerships with our Local, County, State and Federal responders as well as our local stake holders throughout our City.

The Office of Emergency Management is also responsible for training emergency and civilian personnel for response to disasters and emergencies. Additionally, OEM is tasked with overseeing and administrating many other programs within the City. Some of these programs are personnel programs including the Auxiliary Police Unit, Community Emergency Response Team, and Local Emergency Planning Council. Other programs are emergency communications systems including the Citywide Emergency Radio Communication System and Public Emergency Notification Systems. Financial programs that OEM oversees include FEMA grants, State Grants, and the Federal Disaster reimbursement program. To ensure community resiliency in the face of disaster, the Office of Emergency management also maintains the City Emergency Operations Plan, Disaster Response Plans including the Municipal Continuity of Operations Plan and Hazard Mitigation Plan, and the City Emergency Operations Center and Mobile Command Center used for Command Staff to coordinate disaster response.

The mission is accomplished by a staff including a Coordinator, a Deputy Coordinator and Operations staff. The City of Perth Amboy OEM is one of only 3 Municipalities in the County that is recognized by the State and Federal offices as a recipient of a federal grant to support the program as we continually demonstrate best practices in the field. The Perth Amboy OEM is the only municipality in the County to continually operate at the high level of service required to qualify under this program since the inception of the program almost 20 years ago.

The office has been faced with more than 25 presidentially declared disasters in the past 20 years of varying types. Through the diligent work by the staff the City has been reimbursed more than 75 million dollars over the years from FEMA due to the destruction that was caused by these terrible disasters. For Superstorm Sandy, the City received 100% reimbursement (90% from FEMA, 10% from a non-federal cost share program funded by the NJ Department of Community Affairs). The City is also the only community in the State of New Jersey that received a favorable report released by the Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General documenting effective management of all federal funds received for Sandy recovery. No discrepancies were identified during their exhaustive review.