ORlEANS ANNUAl TOwN REPORt FOR YEAR ... - Town Of Orleans

November, thanking all current and former CAC members for their dedicated serviceover the past seven years.Respectfully submitted,John Hodgkinson, ChairmanCIVIL DEFENSEOn behalf of all Town employees who work when our community is faced with potentialmanmade or natural disasters, I present the 2008 Civil Defense (EmergencyManagement) report.This year we made a significant improvement in our notification efforts duringemergencies. Town Meeting approved funds and we contracted with CODE RED, acompany specializing in emergency notifications. We can now send a phone messageto every household in town within ten minutes informing citizens of potential problemsand our efforts in bringing the emergency to a successful conclusion. Through efforts byBarnstable County Sheriff Jim Cummings, we met with radio stations so that that thereis at least one station up and running broadcasting emergency notifications and we arecertainly speaking with citizens as to their observations and suggestions.Our participation with the Regional Emergency Planning Committee is going tosignificantly improve our service to the community. One area is participating in“regional” shelters. On the lower cape the Red Cross will open the Nauset RegionalHigh School and the Cape Cod Technical School in Harwich as regional shelters thatwill be supplied and manned should we need them. We can continue to operate ours inthe Town Hall if it is a minor event however during prolonged major emergencies we aremoving toward regionalizing shelters throughout the cape.Emergency plans for the town are constantly being updated and developed followingtraining sessions by the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency.All town employees have been trained to the required Incident Command System andNational Incident Management level standards as required by MEMA and FEMA and wecontinue to meet our state and federal preparedness requirements by participating inthe Barnstable County Regional Emergency Preparedness Committee that meetsmonthly.In October many town departments participated in a table top exercise responding to afictional hurricane making landfall on Cape Cod. While we did many things right,continued exercises will only lead to improvement and during or critique of the exercise,improvements were already made. The team approach to responding to major eventswill insure that nothing goes unchecked.I would like to thank all of the town departments for their continued support andassistance in time of emergency. This truly is a exceptional town where all departmentswork together toward a common goal.Respectfully submitted,Jeffrey J. Roy, Interim Director146