Other Emergency Alert and Information Sources from La Plata County

When an emergency or disaster strikes La Plata County, responders have many ways to get messages out to you besides our Target Notification "Reverse 911" system.

• Drive-through Sirens - Sheriff or Fire vehicles using combination of sirens and Public Address
• We may utilize people power to get immediate emergency messages out. If you see a Sheriff vehicle with lights and sirens rolling through the neighborhood slowly - PAY ATTENTION what they say may save your life!
• Weather Radio - Emergency Management can use this system for more than weather.  
• La Plata County OEM maintains close ties with the National Weather Service in Grand Junction. If the situation warrants, we can have them launch an emergency alert over their Weather Radio system for our area. We may use it for wildfire, hazardous material spill, or any life safety incident that may affect a broad portion of the County
• NOAA maintains the weather radio system across the country to keep everyone up to date on weather emergencies. The system sends a tone to special weather radios that is followed by an emergency alert like flash flood warnings, tornado warning, etc. All day, the radios are transmitting weather reports behind the scenes. We listen daily to the morning reports to give us an idea of climate and forecast for the area. 
• Battery operated weather radios are fairly inexpensive from online, Radio Shack or even Walmart. Take a look on google. To get local alerts, each radio has to be programmed with the associated local "SAME" code. Ours is 008067. If you have a VHF radio or scanner you can listen to the 24/7 broadcasts at 162.425 MHZ. 
• Fore more on NOAA Weather Radios check out http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/  and our local tower information at  http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/Maps/PHP/site.php?State=CO&Site=KWN54 
• Media - We utilize newspaper, websites and commercial radio 
• La Plata County has a very active Public Information Network made up of information specialists from law enforcement, fire, government, volunteer groups, local businesses and many others. When emergencies arise, the group goes into action to get messages to our citizens through every channel needed and available. We can target the message by using local radio and the Durango Herald or go bigger and include news agencies from Albuquerque and Denver. 
• Twitter - @LPC_OEM - you don't have to have twitter to get tweets
• La Plata County OEM maintains a twitter account to put our some of the alerts and notifications quickly. We try and keep up with National Weather Service weather alerts and big events that may impact you. If La Plata County OEM is involved in an incident, we will most likely update the twitter feed regularly of how the incident may impact you.
• We regularly put our weather events with links to the NWS alert. We try and put out alerts like "Fire Dept is responding to a report of smoke in the 9000 block of CR 999" when we become involved in an event. 
• To get the feed:
• Bookmark  http://twitter.com/#!/lpc_oem
• If you have your own Twitter account, follow @lpc_oem
• If you don't have a twitter account you can get the feed by text. send "follow lpc_oem" to the number 40404 and you will get a text when we send a tweet
• This blog is linked to the twitter feed so what happens on one shows on the other. 
• The  http://co.laplata.co.us/emergency page shows the twitter feed as well. 
• La Plata County Website -  http://co.laplata.co.us/emergency
• In bigger events, the La Plata County website home page will show an alert. If you go to the home page  http://co.laplata.co.us/ and look in the left hand side under "How do I find" and you should see a green dot next to "EMERGENCY ALERT". When we post an alert the button turns red. If you click the button the page that pops up will have alerts and official County statements. 
• Door-to-Door - knocking door-to-door or posting letters at your property
• When all else fails, we may go door to door to get the message out. La Plata County Sheriff Deputies and Fire personnel will likely be the first out on this duty.  Sheriff's Mounted Patrol and La Plata County Search and Rescue (SAR) will likely be more involved as an event goes on. Sheriff Deputies or Fire personnel may come to your door without flyers in hand. Look for their badge and official vehicle. Mounted patrol and SAR should be in their uniform and should hand out flyers with official statements and direction of where to get verification of those statements.