There is a problem t

EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS AT LVH

There is a problem that exists for Longview Hills Residents regarding timely notification in an emergency or in an information alert. We currently have a Block Captain Coordinator tasked with calling 36 Block Captains who in turn call up to 6 others on their lists. The last use of the system found our coordinator not even half way through her list after 45 minutes and the alert was cancelled at that point. Added to this last problem that several block captains were not available to receive the coordinator’s calls and you have a lot of people not getting informed. That may be all right for something like a water outage announcement but how does that work for us when we have a far tsunami inbound from Alaska and it is absolutely critical that everyone shelter in place and not go anywhere near low lying areas along 101? The CERT team has a plan that we would like to put in place and have regular drills on (maybe monthly at noon for instance). We think but do not know if it will work so we want to give it a try.


A proposed solution.....

The problem comes to the Neighborhood Watch Coordinator either from the Park manager or the CERT team. The CERT team will be notified via NOAA Emergency Radio or the county wide disaster Control. The Neighborhood Watch Coordinator calls the duty CH 5 (FRS Radio Broadcaster.. probably a CERT team member) The Broadcaster immediately starts broadcasting the warning on CH5 until told to stop. The coordinator initiates the calling to 5 block Captains evenly spaced through out the park. If one is not at home another is selected. Those five turn on their car horn emergency system and continue calling their list. Each person called turns on their emergency car horn until a broadcast on CH 5 reports all clear for horns. Then the horns are shut down.

The community at large knows at that point that they have heard the car horn alert to tune to CH 5 and receive the alert broadcast or wait for a call from their own block captain.

At some point Ch 5 continuous broadcast is shut down and announced for residents to stand by for further instructions or an all- clear. During this event, in the future, CERT members would go around the neighborhood on bull horns announcing the event also.


Not a Rooky....

Ok, I am not a rooky when it comes to trying to put something new into operation at Longview Hills. There are going to be those of you who view this as an attack on your privacy, undue noise generated which you find offensive and overkill for a situation that you feel will never happen. I can assure you that those folks are looking at this and gearing up for a tizzy of a fight right now.

What I would like from all of you is for you to input ideas and positions in the comments to see if there aren’t better or more stream lined ways to get information passed. It doesn’t have to be the way described. Give us a better idea to work on.

Meanwhile, we will work out a poll for those of you who don’t want to comment but want to have a say.