Town updates emergency management website

Date: 1/17/2012

Jan. 18, 2012

By Debbie Gardner

Assistant Editor

AGAWAM — The town recently updated its emergency management website, www.agawamem.org, and both Mayor Richard Cohen and Emergency Management Director Chester Nicora hope residents will take a look at the new information and links before the next big weather event hits.

“What we’re trying to do is get residents more prepared for storms,” Nicora said, adding that the website now includes links to Red Cross and Federal Emergency Management Agency information on storm preparedness as well as safe winter driving tips and click-through access to the town’s Connect-CTY emergency contact information sign up page.

“We’re encouraging people to go on Connect-CTY and put in [their] cell phone numbers,” he said. “As long as the cell towers are up, we can go in [to the system] and put up messages through my cell phone.”

The site also offers links to real-time Agawam weather reports and radio updates from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In addition, recent weather-related tweets are posted on the homepage.

Cohen said the town is also working to develop its own Facebook page. He said he looks at the use of social media as yet another way for the town to provide information to residents in times of emergency. He added a town Facebook page could also be useful when there are “events we feel have a significance to the community.”

Nicora said one of the weaknesses the town and his emergency management team uncovered following the Oct. 29, 2011 blizzard, which left the majority of residents without power or landline phone service for up to seven days, is that dissemination of information in an emergency needs to be improved. Because residents had often listed just a landline number on their Connect-CTY emergency information, many did not receive ongoing updates on the power situation. He encouraged elderly residents, who might not have a cell phone, to ask a family member or trusted neighbor to make sure they receive information in the future.

Cohen said that the revised emergency management website, which town administration can now update, along with the regular town website, the use of Twitter and a proposed town Facebook page would insure that in future emergencies, “if [residents] are able to connect by Wi-Fi, they will be able to get information and messages put out by the town.”

“I’m not saying that we didn’t have good communications [during the Oct. 29, 2011 storm]. We had robocalls [to residents on Connect-CTY], I had my cell phone and our office was staffed. But there were some areas that needed to be improved and we are working on that,” Cohen added.

Debbie Gardner can be reached by email at debbieg@thereminder.com