Notes on the Gold Hill Emergency Preparedness Meeting, February 18, 2014

Deb Yeager chaired the meeting and 24 people attended, the Pod leaders of our Neighborlink group (Deb, Teresa, Dina and Gretchen), many of the Pod assistants, as well as people from BCARES (Boulder County Amateur Radio Emergency Services) and other interested people.

Deb thanked everyone for coming, and especially the newly trained Ham radio operators.  She introduced Bill Van Matre and Tom Fisher, Ham radio guys from Lefthand here to share information, Joe Callahan of BCARES, and George Weber, Ham instructor, and thanked them for all their help.  Dave and Anita Sturtz and Mark Elder are our own long-term Hams and Dave has volunteered to help our new network.  The Ham network can provide much needed communications during an emergency with the County and OEM– especially if our phones go out – and back up our local fire departments.

Deb wanted to bring us all up to date on the Neighborlink Pods and Groups in Gold Hill.  This is the telephone tree that developed after the fire and the forms include all kinds of useful information in case of an evacuation or other emergency in order for us to communicate with and help out each other.   There are 4 Pods in Gold Hill:  East and West Old Town, West of Town, and the Subdivision.  There are approximately 5 groups in each Pod.  It’s time for all the Pod leaders and Group leaders to make sure everyone’s contact information is up to date and contact any new people.  New People get a welcome bucket with all kinds of info and stuff, including the Neighborlink form and all are encouraged to participate at whatever level they choose.  Say there is an evacuation notice – Gretchen calls Deb, she calls Dina, she calls Teresa, and she calls Gretchen back so we know all the Pod leaders are notified.  Then the Pod leaders call their group leaders, who call those in their group and then circle back (thanks to input from Bret Gibson on the value of circular communication) to their Pod leader, and we circle back to Deb (hopefully within 5 minutes) with the info on who has been contacted and who has not.  If a Pod leader is out of town (we let each other know), then another Pod leader has to call her group leaders.

Jamestown has a siren that also makes announcements.  We do have a siren at the Firebarn, but no siren system could reach community-wide in Gold Hill, although there are some possibilities there.  We will hopefully hear through Everbridge (our reverse 9-1-1 system – if you are not signed up, go to the OEM webpage for instructions) or the Fire Department when there is an emergency and everyone needs to be contacted.  Joe reported that OEM tests all the sirens in Boulder the 1^st Monday of each month at 10 a.m.  Dave Sturtz speculated that perhaps we should test ours as well.

Joe reported that OEM is now using Weather Radios for emergency notification in the mountains. If you don’t have a weather radio, we encourage you to get one!  They can be tuned so that only Boulder County announcements come through.  They can be used as triggers to set off sirens, notify the POD leaders, and set off the Ham radio response.

For the Hams, we have a repeater here that serves everyone in the valley.  There are a variety of Simplex frequencies, if we need to communicate with our neighbors, and they are always on 24/7/365.  (I’m over my head here – the Hams know what this is about).  Our Hams can be a back up for the Fire Department.  If there are any 5 interested people, Joe reports that they are always willing to teach a class.  A good radio costs $150 and they are looking for any available old ones.  We need to decide how the Hams will interact with the Pod system, who leads the Hams, etc.  We need shared expectations on how to utilize their abilities.  There was some discussion on whether the repeater should be relocated to reach more people – more on this later.  The Hams will all meet together after this general meeting to discuss all these issues.  In other communities that have had their networks set up for awhile, they generally link up once a week to keep in touch.

Deb went on to explain that Neighborlink is a phone tree and everyone needs to have a phone that doesn’t require electricity (like an old rotary phone) for when we lose it.  Eventually all the phones will go down unless Verizon can get up here with a generator to power the box at the crossroads – it only has back up power for so long – but in the meantime your rotary phone will work even if your electricity is out. Safesite is a group of local people willing to open their houses for evacuees and the Gold Hill School is available in an emergency as an initial gathering place.   The combination of the 2 groups is now called Safelink.  It’s important for people to know that we in Neighborlink don’t share any personal information with others.

During the flood, we did get into the school, but couldn’t contact the OEM to let them know – this has been worked out, now.  Deb took a couple of people to her house.

Deb then reported that there is a very heavy snow pack this year and the powers that be in the County are very concerned about spring run off, given the damage still from the flood to our roadways and streamways.   This is one of the motivations to get us all up to date and prepared.  We also want to set up a Mock Event to test Neighborlink.  It was decided that we would do this Saturday, April 5 between 10 a.m. and noon.  We want to see how fast we can contact everyone – how it will all work.  We will notify the community more than once that we will be doing this.

Joe suggested that we need back-ups for every position 2 deep.

So!  Fill out your Neighborlink form and give it to your group leader, get a Weather Radio, sign up for Everbridge (http://www.boulderoem.org and there is all kinds of other good emergency preparedness info there, as well), and, of course, we all hope we will not have another major disaster, but we will be more prepared if that does happen.  Happy Spring!

Gretchen Diefenderfer, note taker