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Bonney Lake public-safety update highlights FEMA-funded recruits, OneWeb satellite plan and alert-system vendor change
Summary
Council heard a public-safety briefing: East Pierce Fire has 13 recruits in academy (graduating in May) and three paramedics graduating from Tacoma, paid through a FEMA grant; city staff are installing OneWeb satellite connectivity at the Public Services Building (and plan similar capability at Public Safety) and have switched the Bonney Lake Alert vendor from CodeRED to Genesis.
Council Member Baldwin told the council on Feb. 10 that East Pierce Fire has 13 recruits who began the academy and are expected to graduate in May, and that three paramedics will graduate from the Tacoma program in mid-February; those training positions are paid through a FEMA grant.
Baldwin and staff described an emergency-communications upgrade: the city has installed a OneWeb satellite system at the Public Services Building and plans testing and potential expansion to the Public Safety Building so critical communications remain available when traditional lines go down.
"The satellite provider that they are gonna be using is called OneWeb," Baldwin said, explaining the objective is to maintain connectivity for police and public-services systems during outages and to support remote pump houses and other infrastructure.
Baldwin also reported the newly formed damage-assessment team and regional school reunification planning (a "72-hour" reunification goal led in part by the Sumner-Bonney Lake School District). He said Bonney Lake Alert has moved from CodeRED to a new vendor, Genesis, and will continue operating under the Bonney Lake Alert name.
Why this matters: the satellite redundancy and vendor transition aim to strengthen emergency communications following storms and outages; FEMA-funded training increases local emergency staffing capacity.
Next steps: staff will continue system testing, report on OneWeb deployment and coordinate with school-district reunification planning.
