GULF SHORES, Ala. – Emergency planners in Gulf Shores and Orange Beach got to put plans in motions as Isaac bore down on the area last weekend.

And, as it fortunately turned out, it was simply a practice session, begging for a football analogy as the state gears up for another season.

“This was our, what do they call it in a football game, a scrimmage?” Gulf Shores Emergency Management Coordinator Brandan Franklin asked. “This was our scrimmage with mother nature.”

Leading Orange Beach’s emergency response is building official Lanny Smith.

“Just looking strictly at the local response and the preparation, we know we’ve got some areas we need to improve, but overall I think it went very well and had we been the center of the landfall I think we were definitely prepared,” Smith said. “Definitely we’ll benefit from the luxury of kind of having a trial run.”

This was Franklin’s first trial run as the coordinator for the city after taking over for retired Police Chief Arthur Bourne in March. Bourne retired from the chief’s job in 2009, but retained the EMC position until Franklin’s appointment.

Franklin said the city’s plan worked in his first storm in the new role.

“It did give us an idea, being a rookie as emergency manager having the plan that we had started and created and worked off of,” he said. “It did give us a good trial run to see exactly where our strengths and weaknesses are and what we need to work on and improve without taking that direct hit. We’re very pleased with that.”

For Smith, his local team has been together for a few years, but got the experience of working with new crews at other levels of emergency response.

“It turned out we learned a lot from this,” he said. “Our guys on the ground have basically been through what was expected of them on the local level. We’ve got a brand new county EMA director and a new director at the state. We have all on the local level been through it before, but we haven’t been through it with this team if you look at it as a whole.”

The new county EMA director is former Gulf Shores firefighter and Battalion Chief Mitchell Sims. Having Sims in that spot is a plus for him, Franklin said.

“So when we do call him it’s not foreign to him,” he said. “That was really beneficial.”

Franklin came away encouraged by the reaction of the Gulf Shores team.

“The transparency amongst all the departments in the city I thought was extremely well,” he said. “That along with everyone working together and everyone working together as a team, an emergency management team that we put in place together.

“Although it may have been firemen overseeing operations, in different positions and having the different divisions. They may have been outside their typical everyday job with the duties they were given in the team itself. The way that worked out was great.”

A new call center recently added to the plan was a bright spot, Franklin said.

“We established a call center that received hundreds of calls daily by taking some of the other departments like library and the Bodenhamer Center that were closed, taking those employees and establishing a phone bank in one central area,” he said. “So when we did get those calls we were able to relay the same message.”

A weak spot, Franklin said, was the issuing of proper paperwork for residents and repair companies to gain access to the island.

“Some things that could be improved are our credentialing,” he said. “That was a problem at times when we did establish roadblocks and blocked-off areas.

“One of the major things I would say within the city itself is getting the message out for the reentry passes, the reentry pass and the contractor passes that we issue throughout the year. I think that’s something we’ve got to do a better job of and better job of relaying that message to the public and identifying the areas that are actually blocked off and the process of how that goes out.”

Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon was encouraged by the response he saw.

“This has been an aggravation, but from an emergency management perspective it has been a great exercise,” Kennon said. “It pointed out where the holes in our programs where, what we needed to correct, what we could do better, all the way from the governor on down. When we do have a real threat, we’ll be even better prepared. We were prepared this time, but even more so.”