INSIDE

PREP group looking for standing

By Meg Olson

Amateur radio operators from across the border came to the last meeting of the Point Roberts Emergency Preparedness (PREP) committee to offer a possible communications link in case regular lines of communication went down in an emergency.

“You’re sort of on your own sometimes and we may be able to help,” said Doug Barry of the Delta Amateur Radio Society at the March 6 PREP meeting. “We would kind of be helping in the short term until people got to you.”

In Delta, Barry said amateur radio operators worked with the provincial emergency services plan, setting up radio stations at firehalls that would communicate with the emergency operation center at city hall. “Basically, we are the communicators,” he said. He suggested there might be amateur radio operators on the Point who could do the same here and network with their counterparts north of the border.

“If you look at a major disaster, like a tsunami, we’d all be in the same boat,” said PREP committee member Ron Klages. “The high ground is the border.” Klages said the county emergency plan designated the fire station as the community assembly point and suggested the committee work with local amateur radio operators to set up a communications center there.

Steve Wolf, a member of the committee, agreed to coordinate communications, working with the Delta group as well as with local radio operators.

PREP director Emily Smith said the recent storm had taught Point Roberts lessons in the need for self-sufficiency, as well as the need to be clear in requesting help from the county. “We’re writing an official letter explaining the situation as we saw it,” she said. “I don’t want to be angry but the county needs to be there for us and we need to help them have what they need to be there for us. My biggest complaint was in the lines of communications, or lack thereof.”

Smith said the committee needed to know who is responsible for communicating with county emergency services, and how that communication can get the Point the services it needs in an emergency. “The overall sense after the storm was that the county did not provide the response we needed,” she said. “But they’re not going to come looking for things to fix. We need to tell them what’s broken.”

After several months of research, Smith said the committee was ready to start reviewing a first draft of an emergency services plan for Point Roberts, based on the plan for the city of Nooksack. The difference with the Nooksack plan and other plans for small communities, Smith pointed out, was that they suppose an official local entity – a city government. “We don’t have that,” she said. “When the plan is written PREP will act in that role as there is no other entity to do it so I want to get recognized as an entity with the same rights as a city in an emergency,”

Committee member Mark Robbins suggested the fire department would serve as the lead agency in an emergency, but Smith said with a part-time fire chief the community needed to build a wider response network. “What we need is a chain of command,” she said.

At their next meeting, which is not yet scheduled, committee members will begin to review the draft plan. Smith said once the official kit is complete the group will work with the chamber of commerce to put out a community guide that includes a layman’s version of the plan, including what every household needs to prepare in a 72-hour kit of supplies to last until help can arrive. “For Point Roberts we’ll be calling it the 10-day kit,” Smith said.