We wonder why! – Columbia news, views & reviews editorial

Columbia Water Company is not a member organization with PaWARN.

PaWARN is a statewide Water / Wastewater Agency Response Network (WARN) of “utilities helping utilities” to:

• Prepare for the next natural or human-caused emergency.
• Organize response according to established requirements
• Share personnel and other resources statewide, by agreement.

The Mission of PaWARN
The mission of the PaWARN network is to support and promote statewide emergency preparedness, disaster response and mutual aid assistance for public and private water and wastewater utilities for natural and human caused events in the Commonwealth.

Purpose: PaWARN provides water and wastewater utilities with:

• A Mutual Aid Agreement and process for sharing emergency resources among water and wastewater agencies statewide.
• A mutual assistance program consistent with other statewide  mutual aid and assistance programs and the National Incident Management System.
• The resources to respond and recover more quickly from a natural or human caused disaster.
• A forum for developing and maintaining emergency contacts and relationships.

Participation
The PaWARN Omnibus Mutual Assistance Agreement is available to all public and private water and wastewater utilities in Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania Utitities Commission is supposed to “balance the needs of consumers and utilities; ensures safe and reliable utility service at reasonable rates; protect the public interest; educate consumers to make independent and  informed utility choices; furthers economic development; and foster new technologies and competitive markets in an environmentally sound manner.”

Note the words, “protect the public interest!” Think that may include assuring that utilities have a comprehensive citizen alert plan with tested implementation before something bad happens? We do.

Social media

Notice, too, that the PUC uses social media (facebook and twitter) as part of its communication arsenal.

When will the water company  and the borough come into the 21st century with a comprehensive Customer communication plan?

Other alert systems

There are other emergency situation communication systems about which the water company and citizens ought to be aware.

Two of these systems require citizens to register to be notified via telephone or text when something that presents a potential or real threat to human safety or health.

Click on the photos below to be redirected to the Websites to find out more or to register. Obviously, to find out about an emergency the municipality, agency or private company has to inform the alert system operators. As learned from Katrina, Virginia Tech and other incidents, prompt emergency communication and message redundancy is vital. And required by law.

“Pennsylvania uses AlertPA to provide our citizens and partners with timely information to assist them in making informed decisions. AlertPA delivers emergency and weather alerts, health notifications, tax notifications, building alerts and updates to steer, guide and warn you on all your devices:

• Email account (work, home, other)
• Cell phone (via SMS)
• Pager
• Smartphone/PDA

“When an incident or emergency occurs, authorized senders will instantly notify you using AlertPA. AlertPA is your personal connection to real-time updates, instructions on where to go, what to do, or what not to do, who to report to and other important information.”

“Emergency Management Agencies throughout the South Central Task Force (SCTF), which includes the counties of Adams, Cumberland, Dauphin, Franklin, Lancaster, Lebanon, Perry and York, are implementing a new emergency notification service.  This service will allow residents and businesses in the eight county area to be notified of an emergency situation and important alert messages in a variety of ways, including on their cell phones, home and work phones, by text messaging and e-mail.

“Many residents and business already have been added to the system from publicly available White and Yellow pages information.  But this listing only provides a single contact phone number.  People with unlisted phone numbers, or those whose primary phone number is a cell phone or VoIP, must provide their contact information if they wish to receive these alerts.

“Registration is handled by clicking on one of the links, above or below, to the South Central Alert self-registration portal.

“People who wish to receive alerts on phone numbers other than the number listed in the White or Yellow pages, and those people who would like to receive alerts via email, SMS, TDD/TTY, etc., will also need to register.

“Remember, if we cannot reach you, we cannot alert you.”

Morally and ethically, everyone has a duty to warn others of a hazard; shame on those who know of risks and threats to other and have “failed to warn others.”