When the Echo Hose Ambulance Corps purchased 50 winter blankets last year to have on hand, it might have seemed excessive, said assistant chief Joseph Laucella.
Then a winter storm iced up the roads in December, causing a serious crash on Route 110, where more than 50 cars piled on top of each other as they slid down the hill.
“We used those 50 blankets to keep people warm and prevent hypothermia,” Laucella said.
It was only one of a handful of bizarre incidents Mother Nature handed to Shelton this year.
The natural disasters include a tornado touching down near the Stratford border in July, the ice storm and 50-car pile up in December, and a mudslide that left a home teetering on a cliff for almost a week.
City emergency responders said they are thankful no one was seriously injured in any of the incidents. And, they said they were happy to get some real-life practice in unexpected situations.
“We’ve actually planned for these types of events,” Laucella said. “Not specifically for mudslides, but for mass casualty events.”
Lessons Learned
“I’d have to say, the response to each went fairly well,” said Police Chief Joel Hurliman. “There’s always things that can be improved upon.”
The Police Department realized after the July tornado that they needed to beef up the list of contacts in their reverse-911 phone system, which calls residents and notifies them of emergency situations going on.
The police department wanted to let residents in the Pine Rock section know that power lines were down, and potentially dangerous. They sent out a reverse-911 message to the residents, but many couldn’t receive the notification because they had no power.
“The amount of phone information that came with the system, it didn’t include the cell phone numbers,” Hurliman said. “That’s one of the things we’re currently working on, inputting cell phones and e‑mail so we can get the information out to you in the emergency.”
Laucella said the variety of incidents got local crews working together, and with other outside departments, such as the state Department of Transportation or the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“It gave us a real good chance to work with many different divisions of emergency services, whether it be at a state level, local level, or federal level in some cases,” Laucella said.
Equipment
And the incidents help justify some equipment purchases – like the 50 winter blankets.
The ambulance corps also purchased an off-road vehicle this year, which was used to get through derbis after the tornado.
The city also has a new communication system called the Cross Band Repeater, which lets emergency responders on different radio frequencies communicate with each other on walkie talkies, Hurliman said.
“We went out and purchased equipment for the ‘what if.’ What if we need to go in the woods,” Laucella said. “This year was definitely a year of ‘what ifs’”
