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Livingston Parish describes new emergency tech: app, weather stations, generators and safe rooms
Summary
Parish homeland security director outlined recent investments including an integrated parish app and website for geofenced alerts, roughly eight or nine weather stations from a recent grant, and generator and battery upgrades for critical communications and the EOC.
Chris Anderson, director of homeland security for Livingston Parish, detailed a series of recent investments intended to improve local emergency response and warning capabilities.
Anderson said the parish funded an app integrated with the redesigned parish website to deliver geofenced alerts, shelter and pod locations and other emergency information even when users do not have the app open. "We can send out alerts through that app by geofence," Anderson said, and the parish will post shelter openings and pod-site locations there.
On weather monitoring, Anderson described installation of roughly eight or nine strategically placed weather stations funded by an early-alert grant that will feed live wind-speed and other data to the parish emergency operations center (EOC). "I'm looking for the wind speed data during the hurricane so that I can determine what's safe for our partners and our parish to be working in," Anderson said, adding the parish uses a 45-mph threshold for operational safety decisions.
Anderson also described generator upgrades funded by a separate grant and parish budget line items: replacement of an 11-year-old generator that serves the parish communications tower and lithium battery backups with an expected multi-year shelf life. He said the parish completed safe rooms for Fire District 5 and continues to pursue drainage master-plan projects such as Allen Bayou relief, erosion control and bank stabilization.
Anderson encouraged attendees to tour the parish EOC and said these investments are intended to improve resiliency and decision-making during storms. The parish will continue to seek funding and partnerships to advance projects in the mitigation plan.
