BRIGHTON – The city of Brighton says it is as ready as it can be for this spring’s round of rough weather.
But Rebecca Martinez, the city’s emergency manager, said the process to get ready involves something for everyone – from residents, insurance companies, construction firms and cable TV providers to the first-line responders from police and fire departments to the American Red Cross.
In addition to meetings within the city government, Martinez holds meetings with United Power, Excel Energy, Brighton School District 27J and Platte Valley Medical Center. Most of the local effort, though, starts with area residents.
“When you get an incident such as Joplin, it overwhelms the system of local jurisdictions,” Martinez said. “It really requires individual skill sets to ‘stop the bleeding.’ What am I going to do for three to five days? When an emergency happens, automatically people think it’s a local government issue. It is, but the general public is part of the process.”
In case of a disaster, the city has three evacuation shelters – the Brighton Recreation Center, the fire station in the Todd Creek subdivision and the fire station in Great Rock Park. Fifty beds are available at the police station. Each fire station has 20 more cots, and the city has access to 20 special-needs cots for senior citizens. The area’s three extended-care facilities – Brighton Care Center, Cottonwood Care Center and Hendricks Communities (Brighton Village senior housing) – have agreements to allow transfers of residents from one location to another in case of an emergency.
The recommended course of action is to prepare a 72-hour survival kit, complete with food, medicine, flashlights, etc., Because of the nature of the economy, though, most people live paycheck to paycheck. Not everyone has the extra money to build such kits.
Martinez said the city offers emergency preparedness courses. After completion, participants receive free backpacks (for the Community Emergency Response Team course starting at 6:15 p.m., July 22) and a first-aid kit (for finishing the “Be Ready” class. The next one is 9 a.m., June 19 at the police department, 3401 E. Bromley Lane. Call 303-655-2316 if interested in signing up for either course.
Martinez said despite the incentives, she has a hard time filling those courses.
“The attitude of people is complacent, that it will never happen here,” she said. “We are reactive, not proactive.”
One area of preparedness Martinez is trying to shore up is small businesses.
“Most don’t have a continuation of operations plan just in case,” she said. “Some of those businesses never reopen. We’re trying to teach businesses to develop those plans and understand them. We need to keep the business world operating.
Most of the preplanning started after large snowstorms in 2006 and 2007. Martinez started with the city shortly after those storms.
“Our hazards are different,” she said. “We’re not dealing with typhoons and earthquakes. We altered the plans to meet our needs – hazardous materials, tornadoes, hail. As the population grows and moves out from Denver, we’re seeing more tornadoes. Our people are trained to know what to look for.”
The city of Brighton joined 10 other counties and their cities to pool resources and ideas for dealing with disasters, such as tornadoes, floods, hail and snowstorms. That group formed 14 committees to study such things as whether emergency radios work together, drills for hazardous materials spills, SWAT team exercises and something called a recovery committee.
“They discuss how to pull in private firms and services and assist in recovery operations,” Martinez said. “People think it’s just fire, police, EMS and then it goes away. After Joplin, they had to figure out available resources – public works, how to get building permits, the number of nonprofits, what private entities were available, banks, insurance companies. When most people think of emergency management, they think police and fire. But it goes beyond that.”
The state of Colorado has a secure website for cities to input their available resources and for local businesses and nonprofits to indicate their willingness to help and their respective available resources.
Contact Steve Smith at 303-659-2522, ext. 224 or ssmith@metrowestnewspapers.com.