Mayor Dennis Lever says issues from last December’s ice storm are still affecting the community.
On Jan. 8, the mayor said “We are planning to get together for a wrap-up meeting on how things went from an emergency measures standpoint.”
He said one area of concern was communication.
“The emergency management group had set up a Blackberry network/BBM group to communicate, but getting the message out to the public seemed to be the biggest challenge.”
Lever spoke to Wellington County’s Community Emergency Management Coordinator Linda Dickson.
Councillor Susan Fielding agreed that communication was a difficult issue in the days following the ice storm.
“It’s hard to communicate with people when they have no power and can’t get onto the computer or when the phones don’t work.”
Lever said it seemed as though at the county, communications were being directed to radio stations – but for some people, the message wasn’t reaching the radio station they listened to.
At the same time, “I don’t believe a radio station is going to stop what they are doing to report on what 15 municipalities are doing and how they are responding.”
Lever suggested there needs to be some sort of ‘default’ action the community is aware of – such as the posting of notifications on the door of the community centre.
“But we’ll get through this as part of our local emergency management group.”
He added the municipality did very well and both the roads and fire departments were very busy.
Lever later noted that brush disposal is available at the Wellington County Landfill Aberfoyle transfer site for free until the end of January.
The transfer station is only open three days per week – Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
Lever was asked if any consideration was given to extending that timeframe or at least providing one week in the spring for dropoff.
