Emergency Preparedness Committee Meeting:  October 22nd, 2020 at the Cornucopia Community Center

Members present:  Yvette Fleming, Harry Kellogg and Owen Polifka; present on Zoom:  Roger Lindgren, Jan Victorson and Marie Versen

 

Old Business

Roger reported that the Bell Town Board has approved our request to purchase a generator for the Community Center at some point in the future.

Preparedness Summary:

We discussed various methods to disseminate the survey summary to the residents of our township.  It was concluded that three primary methods of dissemination include: 1). Adding the summary to the town’s website.  2). Allowing our EPRPs (Emergency Preparedness Resource Persons) to hand them out to their respective residents along with other items such as recommendations for inclusion of emergency “to go” bags.  3). To simply have copies of the summary available at the Community Center.

Emergency Quick Reference Guide (Flip chart):

Harry has emailed the latest emergency flip chart version to our committee members.  Since the Extreme Snow and  Ice Storm sections of the guide provided primarily the same content, we decided to condense those sections into one section entitled, Extreme Weather Events which will be a separate section from the Tornado and Straight Line Wind section.  With regards to the Flooding section of the guide, we will delete the three bullet points under the third paragraph (referring to evacuation routes and who to contact with regards to an impending flooding situation).  Instead, we will recommend calling 911 as they are better prepared to quickly refer the incident to the appropriate resource such as the town chairperson;  police, highway, or sanitation departments as well the electric company and the county emergency government.  No formal changes will be made to the Power Outage or Forest Fire sections at this time.

We discussed various aspects of the Epidemic or Pandemic section and elected to change the sentence referring to various government agency communications to just one resource, the Bayfield County Emergency Management Coordinator, who is in a position to best process this concern.  Yvette will review this section as well as the Power Outage section to evaluate the language making it as concise as possible being that the flip chart guide is designed to be a quick reference.  She will also delete the sentence in the Seasonal Weather Extreme section advising residents needing oxygen to always maintain a three day supply (Rule of Threes) and allow it to remain in the Power Outage section.  This will also apply to drinking water.  She will ensure that your EPRP will be included in the sentence referring to establishing a means of support.

FEMA Pamphlets:

Roger will pursue the possibility of obtaining 200 copies of whatever FEMA pamphlets we elect to distribute to our residents via our EPRPs.  We decided to table any further discussions on the pamphlets to a future meeting.

Emergency Shelter:

Yvette reported that she has requested and received the Red Cross guidelines checklist recommended for a temporary emergency shelter.  She also encouraged our committee to review the checklist in terms of what would be needed for the Community Center to serve in that capacity.  Jan suggested that Yvette contact the Red Cross to request an on-site inspection of the Community Center to determine what actions may be needed.  If the Red Cross is not in a position to provide an on-site visit to make recommendations in person,  Yvette pointed out that we could always refer to their Readyrating.org program site to help assess our preparedness and prepare to make the recommended modifications.

EPRPs:

We are getting closer to filling the EPRP regional positions.  Owen reported that Al Ready and John and Diane Hall have accepted the positions of EPRPs for the West Highway 13 and County Road C respective neighborhoods (regions).  We still need to confirm EPRPs for a couple more regions including the village proper itself.

 

New Business

FEMA ICS course 100:

Roger suggested that we highly recommend that the town board members, the EPRPs,  our committee members, the harbormaster, fire chief, and road crew manager take the FEMA ICS 100 on line course.  It was suggested that we schedule a “table top” exercise to examine the features of the FEMA course.  Jan offered to assist in the development of this exercise.  Roger will schedule this “tabletop” exercise for Monday, November 30th.  More information will follow.

FEMA Organizational Chart:

Roger and Harry will get together at a future date to discuss our version of the FEMA Organizational Chart.  They will identify various candidates that would potentially best fit the positions on our version of the chart.

Next Meeting:

Thursday, 11/12/20, at 6:30 pm via Zoom

Respectfully submitted,

Owen