It has been a difficult fire season for Boulder County. The two wild fires, The Lake Shore Fire and the Stone Canyon Fire are now under control and evacuations have been lifted. Rental property owners and managers in Boulder County may want to consider being a part of the Boulder opt-in emergency alert system.
Disaster preparedness is a critical topic for every member of our community to engage in, and doing so helps us to become more resilient as a result. We encourage all community members to engage in the following steps in efforts to become better prepared:
1. Register for emergency alerts at
www.bocoalert.org, or download and use the Reach Well App. Doing so will ensure that you receive life-saving emergency alert information.
2. Assess your risk. Know the risks that exist in your community, and assess your preparedness skills. This can include not only your personal skills and abilities, but resources that you have access to, and an evaluation of your environment (for example, assessing how well your property is mitigated, how well the structures are maintained to withstand adverse conditions, etc.)
3. Make a plan. Create a plan for how you would respond during a disaster. This should include plans for:
a. Communication – how you plan to get information (making sure that you have at least two methods to receive emergency alert information), and how you plan to power or use devices that you need in order to communicate.
b. Evacuation or sheltering-in-place – plan for your transportation, routes, and in the event of a shelter-in-place, what types of items or resources you’d need.
c. Grab list – make a list of the items you’d want to take with you for easy reference to ensure you grab your most important belongings in the event of an evacuation.
You can also sign up for text messaging by testing "BOCOinfo" to 888777.