The Anarchist Mountain community is a leader in emergency preparedness as residents deal with the risks of living in a dry, pine forest. In this file photo, Darren Hutchinson (right) a captain with the Anarchist Mountain Fire Department, demonstrated a fire-retardant foam to local residents at an event a year ago in this file photo. Residents are now setting up an emergency notification syst5em. (Richard McGuire file photo)
The Anarchist Mountain Community Society is fine-tuning a new system to notify area residents in the event of an emergency.
Mark McKenney, president of the society, said a test on Saturday reached about 200 phone numbers simultaneously and also sent 150 emails.
“We really are quite pleased,” he said, noting the test also revealed some minor “holes” in the system that still need to be addressed.
The system will notify homeowners on Anarchist and Sidley mountains in the event of emergencies such as fires or serious spills of dangerous goods that may require evacuation.
It is possible to notify a limited area such as a single street if the emergency is limited in nature, McKenney said.
The system uses a software program that ironically was developed for telemarketing rather than emergency notification.
“This would be a piece of software that somebody would buy so that they can call you at suppertime every night of the week,” said McKenney. “We’ve adapted that software to do this job for us, but we have not heard of any other communities that have done this.”
The project to develop an emergency notification system is consistent with other emergency planning measures adopted by this mountain-top community with its active community society and strong volunteer fire department.
The community was the first in B.C. to receive FireSmart status for organizing residents to make their homes safer in the event of a wildfire.
“People are very aware that we live amongst pine trees,” said McKenney. “So we had better pay attention to that. We’re just trying to let people know that fires do happen around here.”
The emergency notification system, he emphasizes, is a community activity rather than a fire department activity.
“The fire department just can’t take that on,” he said. “They’ve got other priorities that they have to pay attention to, which is to put the fire out.”
A standing committee of local residents known as Emergency Notification and Communications Committee or ENCOMM developed the project. Members are Wendy Barlow, Sue McEvoy, Carolyne Strohmann and Richard Douziech.
They’ve divided the community into 10 areas and an area leader has been named for each. This enables them to follow up with manual notification calls after the automated ones go out.
The regional district or the police, McKenney said, can only call official alerts and evacuations. They work in co-operation with the fire department.
The fire department notifies ENCOMM, which then spreads the word through its system.
“The community society doesn’t initiate this themselves,” said McKenney. “It’s initiated only when the authorities say it is to be initiated.”
The software sends out recorded voice messages by phone simultaneously to the target numbers and also sends out email messages. It is sophisticated enough that it reports to ENCOMM if any messages aren’t picked up or if the phone message has gone to voice mail.
When the automated messages go out, the area leaders, if they are available, then initiate the manual backup, phoning to double check that people have received the notification.
“This would only happen in a very dire situation and we don’t want to leave any stones unturned, so we have both an automated system and a manual backup system,” said McKenney.
Most people, about 95 per cent, on Anarchist and Sidley have agreed to take part in the system, he said. In some cases a household has more than one number receiving the calls.
Until now, emergency notification has been informal with residents knocking on their neighbours’ doors, but there hasn’t been an organized system.
“We believe this is pretty unique in British Columbia,” said McKenney. “We’ve not heard of any other community that has done this. This is really a community activity of neighbours helping neighbours.”
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
