Our Northern California county/cities have yet to begin making contengency plans. We realize that time is running out for a full scale approach to implementing what needs to be done, but we feel something still needs to be drawn up so we have some way to proceed if things get rough. A small group of us are trying to organize a late-on-the-scene plan to present to our county Board of Supervisors, a simple, one-do-this, two-do-this, three-do-this. We would appreciate your ideas and URL's of towns or county contengency plans that you think are REALLY good and appropriate here, keeping in mind that we are talking about the highest priorities. Thanksalot all!! LuLou

-- Luana Alika (luana@walkon.net), July 22, 1999

Answers

Luana,

I'm not an expert on this topic by any means, but I've heard that the Rogue Valley Y2K Task Force (Oregon) is a well-organized community preparedness group:

http://www.rv-y2k.org/index.html

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), July 22, 1999.

Also see "Year 2000 Contingency Planning for Municipal Governments" by Capers Jones:

http://www.angelfire.com/mn/inforest/capersj989.html

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), July 22, 1999.

A good but basic article on Y2K community preparedness is this one from ABCNews.com:

http://www.abcnews.go.com/onair/WorldNewsTonight/wnt990302_y2k_story.h tml

"Getting Ready for Y2K"

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), July 22, 1999.

There's also this from FEMA:

http://www.fema.gov/y2k/ccmp.htm

"Contingency and Consequence Management Planning for Year 2000 Conversion - A Guide for State and Local Emergency Managers"

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), July 22, 1999.

http://www.ci.eugene.or.us/Council/Agenda/EMORD.htm

Eugene Cuts To The Chase

-- march (straight@line.whip), July 22, 1999.

Lubbock, Texas is another community with well-developed contingency plans:

http://y2k.ci.lubbock.tx.us/index.htm

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), July 22, 1999.

Since being formed in Jan, our group (Bloomington, IN) has found that, to be blunt, there is no way our city can have adequate disaster contingency plans.

We live in a county that will have about 90,000 people in residence on Jan. 1 (Bloomington is a college town -- about 30,000 residents will be at their parent's homes away from town).

If the power goes down, heat is the first priority. Without power, we have no water after a couple hours.

FEMA says if wide-spread disruptions occur, the states are on their own. The IN Emergency Management Agency says if wide-spread disruptions occur, the counties are on their own.

The county EM says they can't provide shelter, food and water for 90,000.

So our message has and will be Individual Preparedness. No one is going to take care of the residents; they had better be prepared to take care of themselves.

If many are ready, the EM might be able to deal with those unable to prepare.

To that end, one of our focuses has been to get the local govt to admit that there might be disruptions and that they can't help most people.

It's working to some extent. We've met resistance on many fronts, but the county EM director recently called for people to be ready for 3-14 days of self-sufficency. The water company is planning on sending out messages with their bills telling people to store water before the rollover.

My suggestion is to start with your local Emergency Management agency. It's their job and they've got some vague directive from above to tell people to get ready. The Red Cross is in the same situation.

--Michael Redman -- mailto:redman@indepen.com This week's film review: http:// www.indepen.com/ Film reviews archive: http://us.imdb.com/ M/reviews_by?Michael%20Redman Y2K articles: http://www.indepen.com/

-- Michael Redman (redman@indepen.com), July 22, 1999.

Luana,

I live in Northern Calif. as well and have done some visiting with county officials here (with not much success....). Where are you? My e-mail is real. I will look forward to hearing from you to share ideas -

Kristi

-- Kristi (securxsys@cs.com), July 22, 1999.

I have done extensive planning (and headbutting) in this area and would be happy to assist in any way I can. See my website www.full- access.com/warwicky2k

-- ExCop (warwicky2k@full-access.com), July 22, 1999.

Luana,

The best site I know of to help with communities and contingencies is Steve Daviss Coalition 2000. Ask Steve your question and join the listservs there. Many of the supporters are VERY active planners and Y2K activists... all over the country.

http://www.coalition2000.org

Good luck!

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), July 22, 1999.

I also live in (far) northern California. NACo has a good site and offers of assistance to counties in assessment, remediation and contingency planning: http://www.naco.org/programs/infotech/y2k/index.cfm Siskiyou County has been on top of the problem, holding its community conversations way back last winter. They do not have a website, but their office of emergency services e-mail is SISQOES@SNOWCREST.NET

I believe that I read a recent article that said that Tuolomne or Tulare County was used by the State of California as a pilot for developing a template for county y2k planning. The State of California y2k page (with tool kit) is http://www.year2000.ca.gov/main/main.asp The California Office of Emergency Management Services has more on their site at http://www.oes.ca.gov/oeshomep.nsf/10884826d3b7edaa882565f0005adc7f/6b b11c0ddcca1048882566f9007a0c54?OpenDocument

Hope this helps.

-- marsh (armstrng@sisqtel.net), July 22, 1999.

Hi y'all....I'm old, so pardon my using an old fogey word, but, "thanks, you"ve all been SWELL"...lots to look up the next day or two....mostly, REAL county or town "contingency" planning isn't, which to me means how to keep the place(s) operating after things go bump- in-the-night....maybe it really does come down to individual preps....it's difficult (still) to believe they aren't doing things like training citizens to manually operate the water plant operations....oh well, sigh....hugs to all responders....LuLou

-- Luana (luana@walkon.net), July 23, 1999.