Chaffee County Taking Emergency Preparedness Seriously
Given the past years of drought and wildfire, let alone the past year of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic known as COVID-19, Chaffee County, along with other Colorado counties is updating its emergency plans. That is plans – plural — because as Chaffee County Director of Emergency Management Rich Atkins says –“We do lots of planning and we have lots of plans. Making a plan and being preprepared for some of those emergencies is how you survive.”
The Chaffee County Office of Emergency Management (OEM) plans, coordinates and supports a wide range of activities that help prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters and large-scale emergencies, while also reducing vulnerabilities to hazards.
Residents attending the Decker Fire Recovery Community Fair confer with members of the Arkansas River Watershed Collaborative while viewing a map on the possible flood impact areas after last fall’s fire.
“We’re updating our hazard mitigation plan – it’s multi-jurisdictional. We identify the possible hazards here besides wildfire that could constitute an emergency – and the mitigation we can take to reduce them,” said Atkins. “In our recent public survey, wildfire came first, then drought and flooding after that.”
Here in Chaffee County, the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) is a department within the county government that also serves the local municipalities and special districts throughout the county. The OEM works very closely with the Colorado Office of Emergency Management and coordinates all efforts that require state and federal assistance.
“Our hazard mitigation plan includes the municipalities. The plan identifies what hazards we believe we need to plan mitigation measures for — like wildfires, drought, flooding, winter storms, avalanches — there are quite a few listed,” explains Atkins. “Most are natural hazards, but three are technology or man-caused; they include hazardous materials, cyberattacks, and pandemics like this year’s COVID. It’s been quite a year.”
In the past year, the OEM has been the department coordinating the filing for federal and state emergency funds the county has received to address the long-term crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, as the summer season approaches, traditionally a higher time for wildfires and floods, the Chaffee OEM is focusing on planning for a different set of potential emergencies.
These hazard mitigation plans are filed every five years, making the county eligible for FEMA hazard mitigation funding. The last time it was updated here was 2016. “We’re updating it now with a grant,” explained Atkins. “We’re updating it based on the hazard incidents that have occurred since then – what conditions have changed. I’ve done a lot of mitigating plan updates in my career – but this is the first time I’ve had to do them virtually.”
The rugged Chalk Creek Canyon stretches some 13 miles above Mt. Princeton Hot Springs Resort. Photo by Jan Wondra.
“We’re working on the planning side now, taking lessons learned from the Paradise fire in California, those one way in – one way out roads for instance,” said Atkins .”People got stuck. We’ve got them here in Chaffee County too.”
The solution, says Atkins, is the development of county zones to keep order and improve residents’ safety. The plan underway right now includes an actual county hazard inventory, framing natural risks as low, medium, or high-risk hazards. A group of 50-plus municipal, county state, and federal professionals are working on the county’s updated hazard mitigation plan.
“We are dividing the county into zones so we could do a controlled evacuation — put some on pre-evacuation while we’re getting out residents closest to the danger first. We’re looking at areas of refuge where people can go for protection where we have vetted emergency access. We’re identifying the pre-build notification zones for the county — identifying the quickest way out — as well as areas of refuge if we can’t get people out of an area. We’re also identifying emergency heliport locations that we can direct people to for evacuation.
The hazard mitigation work is being coordinated with the forest health council on such things a creating fire breaks — coordinating wildfire mitigating projects that incorporate private landowners with public lands.”
Were an immediate emergency to occur, the OEM sets up what is called an Emergency Operations Center (EOC); the strategic or “big picture” management of a disaster. This is a command and control facility from which local governments can provide interagency coordination and executive decision-making to respond to public safety incidents. It coordinates the support agencies’ planning, preparedness, and response activities, and acts as the public information office about the emergency. The on-the-ground response is managed by the on-scene Incident Commander.
Atkins said that emergency preparedness also includes working with the Division of Fire Protection and Control and the National Guard because Colorado counties rely on them for air assets in emergencies. A county that has identified its heli-spot landing sites is likely better prepared than counties that haven’t considered this.
View of the Decker Fire, courtesy of the Decker Fire Facebook Page.
Emergency plans are actually filed with oversight for the Department of Homeland Security Office of Emergency Management. This link provides a county-by-county overview of the emergency response contact for each county. For a direct link to each County’s Office of Emergency Management, click on the County name. As of this past year, the state has added city and town-level emergency management site links to this page, organized under the counties where they are located.
“My worst fire is one that starts local — say in a fire district like Chaffee Fire, where they don’t have resources to fight it in the initial response — and it spreads through our areas of assets. That’s where our people are,” said Atkins. “Those one way in – one way out roads …” His voice trails off. “We’ve been lucky, we haven’t had a lot of hard fires here. But the next four to five years the water on those [Decker fire] burn scars — you burn the vegetation down to the ground and then there is nothing to absorb the water.”
The county-level emergency management plan includes websites and contact numbers; telephone (office and 24 hours), emails, and SMS/text alert systems in Colorado. In participating counties, you can follow the “alerts” link next to each of the identified counties to register for and begin receiving emergency alerts in that area. Counties not identified with an “alerts” link are not known to have active text, SMS, email, or mobile alert systems.
Atkins says that he is concerned about the relatively small number of county residents signed up for emergency notification in the county, which is an Everbridge system that can be subscribed to for free at (http://chaffeesheriff.org/communication/everbridge/).
“We’ve had Everbridge for the last few years – only about 20 to 30 percent of people sign up for it,” said Atkins. “We have an agreement now with FEMA for iPods….to get messages to all cell phone users in the county. Then we’ll be working with families on preparing their [family] emergency plan.”
Chaffee County Emergency Management Contact: Richard Atkins
Office:719-539-6856 – 24 Hour Phone:719-207-2730
Email: ratkins@chaffeecounty.org
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