By Mike Caputo
The village is in the process of implementing an alert system that will deliver critical information to residents within minutes of an emergency.
³Our job as village government is to do the best we can to protect our residents,² said Mayor Mark Weiss. ³Part of that is finding ways to inform them about things they should be concerned about or need to be concerned about.²
Joe Ruvolo, a volunteer coordinator of the Nassau County Fire Commission¹s 3rd Battalion Emergency Operations Committee, which covers six fire companies in the Five Towns and Valley Stream, advised Hewlett Harbor officials as they devised the alert system. Ruvolo explained that local emergency information delivered directly to homes could be more helpful than channel surfing.
³Some of the lessons we have learned from more recent disasters is that notification of what is going on on a more local level is more important than what you get on the media,² Ruvolo said. ³When you¹re watching TV or [listening to] the radio, they¹re giving general regional issues that aren¹t specific to the local area.²
Like most municipalities, the only form of communication among Hewlett Harbor officials and residents is mail. Weiss stressed the village¹s strong relationship with the 4th Precinct and Hewlett Bay Fire District, especially regarding communication. The mayor said that certain messages should not and sometimes cannot wait for as long as it takes to reach residents¹ mailboxes.
³My feeling was that if we had this kind of specific information ‹ if we had information that was going be delivered to us in a timely fashion ‹ it did us no good if we had no way to communicate with our residents virtually immediately,² Weiss said.
Weiss revealed plans for the Village Resident Alert System (V-RAS) in a Jan. 23 letter to residents. In it, he encouraged residents to register their phone numbers with the village, and wrote that the Board of Trustees is aiming for a 100 percent participation rate among the village¹s 450 homes.
About one-third of the village has signed on thus far, and Weiss expects more when people return from winter vacations. He said there has been an ³enthusiastic² response to the program from residents.
Several years ago, the Nassau County Police Department, initiated the Security Police Information Network (SPIN) to enhance public safety. According to the NCPD Web site, colleges and universities, hospitals, schools, businesses, hotels and motels and financial institutions utilize SPIN.
In conjunction with the Nassau County Office of Emergency Management, SPIN members receive e-mail updates on such situations as road closures, severe storms or area robberies.
Paul Clark, 4th Precinct inspector, said SPIN has served not only as a valuable form of communication, but as a useful resource in fighting local crime. ³It has been a successful program, and we have had arrests as a result of that,² Clark said.
Weiss said that the Hewlett Harbor Board of Trustees receives similar notifications from the 4th Precinct, the Hewlett Bay Fire District and the Nassau County OEM. When the new alert system is implemented, that information can be immediately disseminated to residents through phone calls.
According to officials, unlike expensive reverse 911 technology utilized by some schools, the computer-based system from XM Voice used to distribute phone messages is a low-cost feature and would not have an impact on taxes.
When the system is launched, the village will store a collection of canned messages to be used in a variety of situations. The messages can be modified depending on the situation, the mayor said. Eventually, the plan is to expand the system to provide text messages and e-mails to registered users in the event of an emergency.
Weiss also asserted that residents would not need to worry about being bombarded with information. The system would only be used in the event that residents required specific news quickly, he said. ³We are going to have very strict criteria,² Weiss said. ³We are not looking to substitute for mail.²
He mentioned a situation in August, when the Mallow Reach Bridge, which crosses the Auerbach Channel, connecting Seawane Drive to Harbor Road, was declared structurally deficient by the state Department of Transportation. The report was released by the NYSDOT after a Minnesota bridge collapsed earlier in the month.
The village responded to the report by prohibiting commercial truck and bus traffic across the bridge. The mayor suggested that better communication would have allowed for a smooth transition to the bridge¹s new policy. ³It would have been a perfect opportunity to get the message to the community,² Weiss said.
According to officials, Hewlett Harbor is the first Five Towns village to implement an emergency alert system.
To register for the Village Resident Alert System, Hewlett Harbor residents can return the form that was mailed out in January or e-mail the village clerk at villageclerk@hewlettharbor.org.
Comments about this story? Mcaputo@liherald.com or 516-569-4000 ext. 210.
