Emergency manager outlines sheltering plan, urges use of Rave and social media over broken website forms

Weston County’s emergency manager (identified in the meeting as the county EOC manager) briefed commissioners on the county’s emergency operations plans and sheltering support, saying that churches, schools and a community center are preidentified as shelters and that the county will push shelter information via social media and the Rave notification system rather than relying on the county website’s broken forms.

Why this matters: Commissioners wanted reassurance that shelter locations and public-notification systems are current and that special-needs and functional‑needs sign-up processes work in an emergency. The emergency manager said the county’s website contains expired links and a broken CAPTCHA for the special‑needs form, making sign-ups unreliable.

Key points the manager provided:

- Shelters and storm shelters: The county maintains storm shelters and larger displaced‑person shelters. Storm shelters are hosted in churches across the county (examples cited: Church on the Hill, Catholic and Methodist churches, and additional rural churches). For displaced residents during wildfires or floods the county has used school facilities and community centers (the manager cited opening schools and the Lutheran Church during a past incident).

- Notification and sign-up systems: The manager said the county is replacing CodeRED/Nixle with the Rave system, which can store pictures, medical or functional-needs details and pet information, and will push alerts to residents and appear for dispatch if a 911 call is made. Because the county website’s functional‑needs sign-up was not working, officials are relying on home‑health and public-health partners to collect needs information and to feed that into Rave.

- Red Cross and EOC roles: The manager said the Red Cross typically takes over shelter operations once a shelter is opened and that the county EOC coordinates shelter activation, communications and resource allocation.

Commissioners said they want clearer public-facing information on where to go in an emergency. The manager agreed to coordinate with public‑health, home‑health and county web staff (the manager mentioned coordinating with “Becky”) to update public guidance and to provide commissioners with an overview of their fiduciary and operational responsibilities in a disaster.

Ending: The manager told commissioners they would continue using social media and Rave for timely notifications and work on updating the website and sign-up processes; commissioners asked for a short public overview at a future meeting and for a plan to fix or replace the broken web forms.