I have asked Town Administrator Donna Welsh and Council Member Bill Castleman to develop an Emergency Response Plan for our Town. However, we will not be re-inventing the wheel.
Donna and Bill are coordinating with Argyle Fire District’s Assistant Chief Mike Lugo and Lieutenant Chris Muscle. Muscle has been appointed the Emergency Management Coordinator for the Argyle Fire District and for each of the towns within the District (Argyle, Bartonville, Copper Canyon, Corral City, and Northlake.) In addition, we are all coordinating with Denton County Fire Marshal Jody Gonzalez, who is also the Director of the Denton County Emergency Services.
Donna had previously developed an Emergency Response Plan for the Town of Trophy Club, when she was Town Administrator and our ESD#1 President Jim Carter was Mayor. Bill Castleman will be completing the CERT training in April. (CERT is the initials for Certified Emergency Response Team.) The two weekend-long training is offered to community volunteers at the Denton County Emergency Services Building at 9060 Teasley Lane, Denton County 76210. Both Council Member Dave Svatik and myself have already completed the CERT training.
Possible Emergency Events that May Affect our Town
- Missing elderly persons or children;
- Any resident who would be medically at risk, due to dependency on electricity for medical devices such as oxygen tanks, etc.;
- Any condition that leaves homes without electricity or drinking water;
- Tornado or high wind damage to homes or fallen trees that block roads;
- Icy conditions that leave cars and occupants stranded on roads or in adjacent drainage ditches or leave homes without electricity or drinking water;
- Forest fires in our heavily wooded areas, especially on the Corps land adjacent to our homes;
- Train derailments with resulting fires or toxic spills.
Our Town does not currently have active gas well drilling and fracking nor disposal wells for recovered frack water. So, we have not experienced the minor earthquakes that have rattled other areas in the DFW metroplex, including Irving and further south Cleburne.
How Copper Canyon Residents can Volunteer to Help in Town Emergencies
Our new Town website, coppercanyontx.org, will have a form for volunteers for emergencies to fill out in advance of the emergency. Please let us know if you have chain saws, mowers or small 4-wheelers with trailers attached to transport supplies or remove debris, golf carts for moving volunteers and equipment about, small tractors, bobcats, trucks with attached trailers that can move debris or stranded horses, etc.
Or, if you would just like to volunteer muscle power to remove debris, or use your home as a temporary shelter for Town residents whose home is damaged by the emergency event, or use your barn or pasture as temporary shelter for a stranded horse or other livestock.
Copper Canyon has a history of neighbors helping neighbors! Together, we can overcome most emergency events. But – it always helps to “preplan” for those events! Any constructive suggestions are most welcome!
One hour Presentation by Sungard Availability Services to Council Jan. 11 on Direct Emergency Notification to Residents, Service Providers, and Vendors
At the Monday, January 11th Council Meeting at Town Hall (7 p.m.), Sungard Availability Services will make a one hour Presentation to Council on Direct Emergency Notification to Copper Canyon residents, support services, and vendors. The software demonstrated is highly configurable and can notify a given set of email addresses and place automated messages to telephone numbers. Residents can decide if they want to be notified; and if so, restrict their notification to only certain events.
Examples are specific weather warnings from the national weather service, road closures, upcoming key meetings, etc. Unlike Code Red which covers the entire county, this system can be specific to a group of people designated by the Administrator (e.g. just our Copper Canyon residents and/or our support services such as the Town Engineer, our dedicated Sheriff’s Deputies, Argyle Fire District, etc. Also, Town vendors that might be affected such as Republic Services for trash and recycle removal, CoServ for electricity, Verizon for telephone-TV-internet.)
Sungard is based in Wayne, Pennsylvania and has been in the disaster/recovery, cloud, and IT services business for over 40 years. Built on an award-winning platform used widely by the public and private sectors, “Assurance” can leverage easy-to-use web and mobile user interfaces – in addition to powerful smart phone apps – to initiate alerts on the go. Many thanks to Council Member Dave Svatik, who serves as Senior VP of Solutions Engineering, for arranging the presentation of this emergency notification product by his company.
NOTE: Official representatives from nearby municipalities are welcome to sit in on the Sungard Presentation at Copper Canyon’s Town Hall! (We’ll even share our freshly baked warm-from-the-oven Ghirardelli brownies with you!)
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