Inside Arvada

Inside Arvada's Emergency Preparedness with Nick Adams

• City of Arvada • Season 1 • Episode 12

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The City's Emergency Management Coordinator Nick Adams is our guest as part of September's National Preparedness Month.

In this episode, Nick shares why it's important to prepare for emergencies and disasters in order to keep you, your families and your community safe. Learn practical tips like having a fire extinguisher and an emergency plan, and understand how new challenges like proactive power shutoffs can mitigate wildfire risks.

Topics covered in this episode include: 

Other news and upcoming events: 

Visit us at ArvadaCO.gov/Podcast or email us at podcast@arvada.org.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Inside Arvada, the City of Arvada's podcast, where we bring you conversations with the people who make Arvada a thriving community. Hear stories about the past, present and future of Arvada through the lens of the city team members who help make it all happen. Explore the complex topics impacting our community, from the roads you drive to the water you drink, the parks where you play to what your neighbors think. Join us as we take you Inside Arvada.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to Inside Arvada, the official podcast of the City of Arvada. Thank you so much for tuning in Excited for today's show. Our guest is Nick Adams, the city's Emergency Management Coordinator. Nick has been with the city since June of 2023. The city's Emergency Management Coordinator, nick, has been with the city since June of 2023, and before that he worked at Jefferson County Public Health as an Emergency Preparedness Planner. He also simultaneously serves on the Colorado National Guard and has been with the military since 2011. In his current role, nick advocates for emergency preparedness in all aspects of the city and advocates for the regional level for community preparedness in his role as the chair of the North Central All Hazards Regional Community Resilience Committee. In his free time he enjoys snowboarding, camping, cooking and working out, and, as always, I'm joined by my co-host today, katie Patterson. Hi, katie.

Speaker 1:

Hey Sean. Yeah, we're really excited to talk with Nick today. He does such a great job of talking about you know just what it means to be prepared in the case of an emergency, and that's really looking at both individual preparedness and how the individual household can have things like a go bag and sign up for lookout alerts to know when an emergency, to get notified for an emergency, but also the community kind of the broader aspects, so how the city is involved with other organizations and how individuals can kind of be a part of that community preparedness, even just by knowing your neighbors. So really excited to talk with Nick today. So let's dig into the interview.

Speaker 2:

Hi, nick, welcome to Inside Arvada. Let's begin by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do for the city.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so, nick Adams, I'm the emergency management coordinator for the city of Arvada and what that really entails is trying to get the city and all the residents and all the businesses as prepared and resilient as possible for a bad day, whether that be flooding or something like COVID or a wildfire. Bad day, whether that be flooding or something like COVID or a wildfire. So I just spend every day dreaming up the worst case scenario and hoping that it doesn't happen. But yeah, before that I worked at Jeffco for a little bit doing emergency planning with public health. So it was towards the second half of COVID. I was helping out with them, and before that I've been in the National Guard for 13 years. So I was full time in the National Guard for 13 years. So I was full-time in the National Guard for a while. I did a lot of activations on the East Coast with like hurricanes and nor'easters and all that stuff, and then I got activated for COVID and that's kind of how I fell into the public health sector and then I fell into the Arvada aspect.

Speaker 1:

Nice. Well, we're glad to have you here in Arvada now.

Speaker 3:

I enjoy it. It's a lot better than the other options that I was dealing with.

Speaker 1:

Good to know. So September is National Preparedness Month. That's why we wanted to have you on what is National Preparedness Month?

Speaker 3:

So National Preparedness Month. It's like any other awareness month that we have in the United States, you know, cancer, childhood cancer awareness or whatever and this one is put on by FEMA and it's really just meant to bring to light preparedness, and every year they choose a different topic, like last year's was, I believe, vulnerable populations and the elderly, and that was kind of the focus of what they wanted to put energy and outreach into. So it just meant to bring preparedness to the forefront of everyone's minds for a month. And we'll usually do like some safety fairs like Arvada Fire always puts on a safety fair, Adams County puts on one, and it's just a good time for everyone to remember basic safety of like do you have a fire extinguisher in your house? Do you have a plan for if a wildfire were to strike or if you had to lose power for three days, what would you do? And it just meant to kind of strike up those conversations and provide people, resources and events to learn a little bit more.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think that's great and just timely this year in general, with, like the Excel outage that we saw that sort of thing kind of feeling like it's going to become more normal for us to experience some of these maybe smaller scale sort of preparedness needs that could become big scale. We hope they don't. But yeah, good to know and we'll put some resources in our show notes for folks about what's going on throughout the month and how they can learn more about being prepared too.

Speaker 3:

It's nice because every year this comes around and every year, unfortunately, there's new things that we weren't aware of right, like we didn't know the preparedness needs of a COVID outbreak or something like that until it happened, and now everyone kind of has the prepared steps for that. And now it's hey, excel, you know, is going to be doing some proactive shutoffs to reduce wildfire risk, which is awesome. But now it's a new thing that impacts residents and you know we need to be prepared for that. So it changes every year on what the issues are. You know cyber threats weren't an issue 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and now everybody has the constant looming fear of cyber in the back of their minds.

Speaker 2:

Right, you mentioned you know the fire extinguisher Other than knowing where that's at in your home. What are some simple steps you know individuals listening can take to be prepared in case of an emergency.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so we've got some really excellent resources on the city's webpage of some steps you can take with checklists and all that, but really the big thing is having that conversation as a family unit. Is that a single individual living in an apartment with a cat? Or is that a, you know, two adult household with five kids and three dogs and a gerbil and a snake? Right, preparedness looks different for everybody, but it's having that conversation ahead of time. Hey, if we had to leave the house in five minutes right now, what would we do? And that doesn't matter if it's a wildfire, did we lose power and it's 10 degrees outside? There's a lot of different reasons and the reasons are somewhat inconsequential. It's what is your family going to do to endure whatever this hardship, is that happens? So, yeah, definitely going on there onto our website or readygov and just figuring out what resources apply to you.

Speaker 3:

But they have like pet resources of. Hey, if you have a pet, what are some things on your checklist that you should have? Maybe like a bag that has an extra leash and collar and a little bag of food or something like that? All right, does that take five minutes to prep? Sure, but if you do that, that right now, instead of when the event's happening. You know it's right there and you can grab it.

Speaker 3:

But, um, yeah, just general things I would say of making making a plan for for whatever event is going to happen. And having a go bag is always a good thing and it doesn't mean anything crazy. Just some extra toiletries and two, two pairs of clothes and, you know, hopefully maybe your important documents. If you can scroll those away, that's always a good thing to have with you. And then you know your basic safety stuff of a fire extinguisher in the house or like one of the blankets to put over a grease fire in your kitchen, like there's all sorts of different things that would better apply to other individuals. But, yeah, just looking at your house and thinking what happened, what would I do if something bad happened?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so much easier to have that stuff planned out and ready ahead of time than trying to figure it out in the moment and you're stressed and you're probably scrambling and not thinking super clearly. But if it's all planned out ahead of time then it makes it a lot easier, I'm sure.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and a mantra that I've lived by in the military that we always teach is people fall back on their training as opposed to stepping up to the occasion. Right, like, that's not. Sometimes that's the thing. But usually you're going to go to muscle memory, right. That's why police officers train the way that they do, because it's muscle memory whenever they go to do X, y and Z, right, so it's the same thing in your house.

Speaker 3:

If you've trained, hey, if I have to evacuate the house, I'm going to grab these five things that are all in this bag and my kids and my dog. That's what you're going to do. If you've practiced it, if you've gone through these motions before. Don't expect, when you get the warning on your phone that you need to leave your house in 30 seconds, that you're going to be like oh, I got this here we go Like it's just not realistic. Drilling is going to take over all these processes in your body. You're going to naturally happen and you're going to forget stuff. You're not going to get down the road 20 minutes and then be like man, I really wish I had done X, y, z and all that stuff. Yep.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so that's some of how folks can individually prepare within their home. But you also do a lot of work for community preparedness and what we do as a community. So how can someone get involved in the community preparedness side of things?

Speaker 3:

So I mean, the easiest thing sometimes is just knowing your neighbor honestly, because what it comes down to is, you know, we've got a lot of really cool resources that we use anymore to notify people when bad things are happening. Right, we can ping your phone if you've signed up for Lookout Alert or Smart 911, right, you can have all your contact info in there. And there's some other higher-level programs that, even if you're not signed up for, we can use the cell phone carriers to ping you. But what about the elderly neighbor that you have that doesn't have a cell phone and they just use a landline? They may not be as reachable or as easy to contact, or someone that has a medical condition and they are not getting the notifications the proper way.

Speaker 3:

Knowing that neighbor and when you get the evacuation notice, going over there knocking on their door, that saves a lot of lives, a lot of time, reduces the risk of first responders that are out there Like that's such a big step of just instead of treating that person like a stranger and this person that you might wave at every now and then, just doing that introduction, talking you know, seeing what their name is, what their family size is, if you're signed up for lookout alert already. I mean, it's always good to try to get people to be signed up for that, but just know that, hey, if I get the evacuation order on my phone or if I get the shelter in place order on my phone, maybe I have that person's phone number and I can give them a call like, hey, are you guys doing okay or we just lost power? Did you lose power too, right? Just that basic community element.

Speaker 1:

And just so people know, lookout Alert is a tool where you can sign up on their website and you can get alerts to your whichever devices you'd like to. And then you can also input information about your household, if you have medical conditions, if you have pets. For first responders, yeah.

Speaker 3:

So Lookout Alert gives the is the hey, here's my info, notify me. And then Smart 911. It's the same program, it's just like two different portals. Smart 911 is where you can load that in. There. You can load in like hey, I have this many pets, this many kids, these are the medications I'm on, like it gives a full profile and when they go to dispatch something to your house, whether it be fire, ems, what have you? That data is tied to your address that they're coming to or the phone number that you called in from or something like that. So very important if you do have more special circumstances to have that profile built out on there.

Speaker 1:

And then I know you work a lot with Brady, our Neighbors Connected manager as well, or our Neighborhood Programming manager, and then with the Neighbors Connected program he has like a sheet right that you can fill out about like people on your block who have certain skill sets and things.

Speaker 3:

Yep, yeah. So definitely step one would be get to know your neighbor just individually. But then we've got all these really good programs like Brady's Neighbors Connected one, or like the CERT program that is community-based, where it's just pulling in these resources from the community of hey, maybe the guy three doors down from me is a doctor and if something bad did happen, if we were flooding and we had to get out of our house quickly and someone was hurt, we would know. At least they can help stabilize or something like that. So yeah, definitely the Neighbors Connected program is really good and if you or your neighbors are not a part of that, definitely something that would be very helpful to get hooked into ahead of time and just kind of increase resilience and preparedness.

Speaker 1:

You said CERT, cert, yes. What does that stand for?

Speaker 3:

That's the Community Emergency Response Team. Okay, that was convincing. Yeah, so that is a. It's a national program, okay, but we have a footprint here called the Arvada CERT. They have about 100 members and that's usually where they cap it at, and it is a volunteer group that they go through a basic academy where they learn a lot of really cool things. They learn some first aid, they learn the structure to emergency response and the way of leadership and all that. They'll learn some real basic search and rescue tactics and they are an augmentable force that we can call on as the city, the police department can call on or our VAT-A-Fire. They work with all three of us for whatever the event may be.

Speaker 3:

You've probably seen them at some of the outreach events. They usually have a table set up. It's nice and green with the CERT logo on there, but yeah, so they teach the team members a lot of resilient strategies and operational stuff for emergencies, but then they're just members of the society, right. They go back into their neighborhoods, into their houses and then they're little beacons for emergency preparedness across the city to help with outreach.

Speaker 1:

That's really cool. I feel like that's something probably most people wouldn't know exists. I wouldn't have known that prior to working at the city.

Speaker 3:

And not every city has it. This is purely based on the volunteer group that we have working as hard as they do to make this happen. It couldn't happen without them and they are big advocates for it. They practice and train all the time and, yeah, they're just definitely a model in the metro region for how well our program is ran here.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome. You said 100 people-ish cap. Are they usually at capacity or do they do they?

Speaker 3:

usually do one academy a year just from people moving or people no longer wanting to be a part of it for X amount of reasons. But yeah, usually about once a year they'll run an academy, I think like 20 to 30 folks, and again that's all organic to themselves. They'll bring in people to speak and do like first aid training and stuff like that, but they run it all themselves.

Speaker 1:

Nice.

Speaker 2:

So here in Arvada there are some different types of potential natural disaster threats that we want to be prepared for, and the most likely being floods or wildfires. What should folks specifically know about being prepared for those two natural disasters?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think identifying where you live in the city and figuring out what are your biggest risks is always a good thing, because it's different if you live out in Candelas or Leiden or if you live over on the edge of Sheridan right Two very different landscapes. You've got really heavy metro on the eastern side of the city and then you've got the foothills and wildfire risk over there on the western side. So identifying just where do I live, what's going to be the risk that I am most faced with, and just learning about it right, like reducing the ignorance on the topic, is so important, because it's like oh wow, I didn't know that maybe I'm living on the Western side and having all these trees right up against my house actually increases my risk of losing my home during a wildfire, whereas if I did some preventative steps ahead of time, I could better protect myself. Whereas if I live on a different part, that may not be the thing that helps as much, but if I have a sump pump in my basement or something like that, it could help with being at the edge of a floodplain. So, yeah, I think the big thing would just be educating yourself and then those resources I talked about earlier of making a plan and coming up with a go bag.

Speaker 3:

No matter what happens, those are always going to be good it's. If I have to leave my house right now, what do I do? If I have to stay in my house for a long gated period of time without a lot of resources, what do I do? That's really the two options that you run into during an event like this.

Speaker 2:

So just being prepared for that and finding those resources it's going to help, no matter what the risk is yeah, we'll get into kind of what the city is doing as a community, but it's always good for the individual to take ownership themselves and begin there with their own property as it relates to those natural disasters.

Speaker 3:

Well, what I always say is I'm one person. We have 120,000 people in Arvada. I cannot prepare 120,000 people, no matter how hard I try, and no matter how hard the city tries to reduce risk out there, it falls on the individual. At the end of the day of how can I make myself as resilient as possible? Maybe, worst case scenario, I lose my house in a fire. It's not ideal, but if I didn't lose my life, if my family is all safe, then my plan worked right. Like we can rebuild houses, we can buy new cars, but lives are the one thing we can't replace. So how do we make ourselves at the individual level as resilient as possible for those events?

Speaker 1:

So Sean alluded to it. What are some of the steps the city is taking to prepare us for the risk of natural disasters?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So the big one, obviously in light light of the Marshall Fire, is that wildfire risk. As we start to learn more about the risk of wildfires and what the topography looks like on the western side of Arvada, we realize that, hey, this risk is a little different than we had previously imagined it, especially as we continue to build neighborhoods further and further into the wildland urban interface that's out there, which is really just where the tree line and the natural grasses meet, developed neighborhoods and houses. So, yeah, the big thing that we are doing in partnership with Arvada Fire and Fairmount Fire Protection District is the Community Wildfire Protection Plan. Kind of had phase one of that happen over the past year and now we're moving into a joint initiative where it will be all three agencies at the table working on a finished product that we've all contributed to that takes into account, you know, the fire department's views of risks and fuels as well, as you know our open space folks and parks will be represented and our water infrastructure and also some of those neighborhood agencies like Jefferson County Open Space or Bureau of Land Management any of those agencies that have, you know, open space that's butted up right against Arvada.

Speaker 3:

Just because the fire doesn't start in Arvada doesn't mean that it isn't our problem. So bringing all them to the table so that's our initiative over the next year is to finalize that, hopefully have that finalized over the next year and be able to start taking steps to what a CWPP or community wildfire protection plan does is. It helps identify where are risks and what are the big hazards that we can control. So this will allow us to put resources in place more effectively to reduce. Is it, you know, a tree line that's super dangerous? Is it some public grasses that need to be maintained differently over the course of a year? You know, we may not know, and that's why you do a plan like this. It's a lot of analytics that go into identifying those risks.

Speaker 1:

Very cool. Is there anything from kind of the individual or the public side that either the public would be involved with in this plan or should know about it or, you know, read it for awareness? I don't know.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so we did with phase one.

Speaker 3:

There was multiple different I couldn't tell you the number, I don't remember it but multiple different outreach events where they met with the community and kind of got some input from all of them.

Speaker 3:

That's always important with these right Like, we don't know the risks as much as the person that lives there and sees it every day. So that's step one as to how the community is involved. But that will continue through this next phase. But that will continue through this next phase. But also when the plan is published, it is very important in my mind for people to go in there and read and be like, ok, I live in Leiden or I live in Spring Mesa or one of these neighborhoods that are on the western side that are a little bit higher risk. Let me look and see what the analytics say, what are the risks, what are the evacuation routes, if they've identified some Just these different aspects of it. And again, like I said earlier, get more educated on it, and removing just some of the lack of knowledge from the topic really increases people's resilience and ability to build a stronger community from it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's good to hear that we're in the process of creating that, so we'll keep folks updated going forward.

Speaker 3:

And there's. So that's the wildfire side. We are working as well. Our floodplain manager is working on a project right now to just look into some of our floodplains and do some update analysis to make sure our current plans and structure are, you know, as resilient as possible. Plans and structure are, you know, as resilient as possible. I know I keep using that word, but just you know, the flows of the Ralston Creek and the floodplains change over time, just realistically, through rainfalls and all that stuff. So you know we're not just focusing all of our eggs into the basket of wildfire, we're also looking at the flood risk and making sure that that's all up to date. So yeah, we're working with FEMA right now on a project for that which is super exciting making sure that that's all up to date.

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, we're working with FEMA right now on a project for that, which is super exciting, yeah, and we can link to the like. We have a floodplain map people can look at and lots of resources, because that risk and that kind of process has been all around a long time. So they just have a little bit different history. I guess in Arvada.

Speaker 3:

And that one's a lot more like fairly formalized, whereas, whereas like wildfire up against neighborhoods that are at the base of mountains, like that is a unique to not just this area but only a certain amount of areas in the United States, whereas like floodplains and floodplain insurance is like this is the standard, this is how it will be evaluated.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, yeah, and OpenSpace's perspective. It'll be great to have that plan finalized so that us and Arvada Fire and Fairmount Fire and Jeffco OpenSpace are all speaking with a unified voice and informing our community of the direction we want them to go. So looking forward to having that finalized Very exciting. We'd like to kind of wrap up some of our interviews with our guests with the opportunity to maybe explain a little bit more about the work that you do in terms of things that people may not realize or maybe some misconceptions. So that'll kind of be your chance now to let us know, like, what are some things people don't realize about the work that you do, or maybe even some misconceptions that you maybe want to clear up.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean, one of the big things is they hear the title of emergency preparedness coordinator or emergency manager and they're like, oh well, like this all falls on you and honestly, it's rarely does it ever fall directly on me.

Speaker 3:

Whatever the event is, the reason coordinator is in my title is I coordinate with all of the different work systems of the city and external agencies.

Speaker 3:

To you know, I'm the voice, I'm the one that identifies, that says hey, we should probably worry about floods or, you know, hailstorms or heat waves or snowstorms, whatever it is.

Speaker 3:

But I rely on the subject matter expertise of the folks that work in our water utilities or our streets team, that know the roads like the back of their hand and how long it takes to plow them during a snowstorm, or the parks workers that have been out there and have seen what the wildfire risk looks like, right Like I don't know anything on the day-to-day operational side of a lot of this stuff.

Speaker 3:

I'm just the one that voices the concern of trying to bring it to everyone's mind and in their thought process. But it's just so nice to work with all those folks and see, you know, their subject matter expertise really shine when you bring in like, hey, have you thought about this? And their wheels just start spinning and they can give you so much institutional knowledge that I would have never had. So I think that's like the big one that we struggle with is people are like, oh well, you probably know everything about anything disasters, but no, I just know that they're bad and I can help identify and plan for and have that lens, you know, but I definitely rely so much on these experts to help.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I've really enjoyed, like when I've gotten to sit in trainings and things like that, like just seeing people who don't work together day to day or maybe even in the course of a whole year, be in a room together and actually like put a face to a name, really know who each other are, you know, across organization or across different organizations mostly right.

Speaker 1:

So, like from the fire department and as a communication person for both of us, like we work with the police department communication people, the fire communication people and then, in the case of an emergency, those are the people we'd be coordinating through. We definitely, you know, take a backseat to them as kind of the experts in the case of an emergency. But I think that connection across different organizations and different roles that don't come together frequently is something that's really important about what you do and it's been great to be a part of.

Speaker 3:

And it's so nice getting you know. A big thing that I try to focus on and a lot of my peers do across the state and the country, is getting those connections made before an event happens. Right, if we train together and we all talk and you shake hands and exchange business cards on the nice 70-degree Tuesday, that nothing's going on that way. Saturday at 8 pm, when we have sideways, rain and lightning and hail and all that stuff, we already know who we're going to call. We've already worked with them, we already know who they are and it just makes the whole thing a lot easier.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, or you could put us in a training the day before a major winter storm and then may have happened last winter.

Speaker 3:

It worked, though. We were really ready for the winter storm, so I'll take it as a win.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it was. It was like put the training into practice immediately.

Speaker 3:

So yeah, that was great Within 12 hours?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, all right, we're going to wrap up with the lightning round. It's a set of questions we ask all our guests. So, nick, are you?

Speaker 3:

prepared for the lightning round, as prepared and resilient as I can be for something like this All right.

Speaker 2:

So what is your favorite thing about Arvada? It can be a place, a fact or even a hidden gem.

Speaker 3:

I think Arvada overall is a hidden gem to me, just when you look at, like the Denver Metro and all the hustle and bustle, to use some antiquated term. But just you know it's a big metro area and we've got 120,000 folks here in Arvada but it's like still has that sleepy town vibe. It has the old town Arvada vibe, and that's something you can't make, you can't create anywhere. It's just an organic thing that comes from a older town like this. That hasn't history. And I just I mean my wife and I don't live here in Arvada and we still come over to go to old town to spend our free time because of how much we enjoy it.

Speaker 2:

I like that, the whole town as a hidden gem. That's great. What was your first, last or best concert?

Speaker 3:

Oh man, I'd have to say it wasn't my last, but my first one here at Red Rocks in Colorado was 311, like two and a half years ago, blown away Again, first time being at Red Rocks, so that's a whole experience in and of itself. But just seeing a band like I grew up with 311, becoming a thing and having the now cult following that they have, it was so cool to see them play and just the community that was there yeah, top tier experience in my life.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you can't go wrong going to a concert at Red Rocks. I didn't realize they're still out there touring. I was 311. I grew up listening to them too.

Speaker 3:

This was like two and a half years ago, Right when we like the day after we moved out here we went to the concert. But yeah, and they still jam and rock. Nice Speaking about being prepared when you go out there.

Speaker 2:

You got to be ready for any sort of weather conditions for sure. Found that out what brought you to Arvada and work with the city.

Speaker 3:

So, like I said, I worked with Jeffco before this and obviously most of Arvada falls in Jeffco and so I had worked with my predecessor here at the city and I'd done a lot of work with the city of Arvada and City of Lakewood and you know all the other major players across Jeffco and I just really enjoyed working with Melissa, the lady that was in this position before me, and just the way that Arvada seemed to run from the outside looking in. We'd had a lot of success with the point of distribution for testing and all and stuff that was up here through public health. So when the position became available I was like, well, I have to at least give it a try. It'd be really exciting to work up there and just seemed like a very progressive group in the way of emergency management and preparing the community as a whole and it has lived up to every expectation I had. And then some I was going to say it was my follow-up, so that's great. No, I have nothing but great things to say about it.

Speaker 2:

We are all lucky, certainly to work for the city, and going back way before Jeffco, what was your first job?

Speaker 3:

So off the books. When I was like 13, I worked at a fish and reptile store and I was the professional bagger of fish. So very, very important job there. When people would come in and get like goldfish to feed their other fish, that was my job, so really good at that.

Speaker 1:

Jobs we didn't know existed.

Speaker 3:

Well, for 13-year-olds that's really a good role. But then, like first one that I worked that I had the government aware of, I worked at a gift shop in a hospital out there in Delaware. So it was the perfect like after-school job where you could go and then I would sit there and watch Scrubs with my friend while we worked in a hospital. Ideal, nice, top-tier experience.

Speaker 2:

Did you have to handle the reptiles too, or just the fish?

Speaker 3:

No, no, no, I was not qualified for the reptile aspect of it, really just the fish, and not even even like the expensive nice fish. It was just like the goldfish and that was pretty much it, and like the beta fish.

Speaker 2:

And then what's your the?

Speaker 3:

favorite project you've done while working with the city now.

Speaker 3:

Oh, so one of the big goals that was set for me when I came in here was to update our emergency operations center, which is just a place Katie had alluded to it earlier where we come in during an event and coordinate right, we coordinate resources and situational awareness.

Speaker 3:

We've got big screens that we put up maps of what's going on and all that stuff, and so the goal that was set for me was to update that area, the workflows around it, and I've executed on that pretty well thus far and I really enjoyed a lot, just because, again, it's not just MySpace, it's all of the team members across all these work systems, so it's seeing how they interact with the space and what processes work well for them or what are unrealistic, you know, and just getting that input, doing some trainings. We've already done some. We'll continue to do more. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun to update that and put it into practice. We've used it, I think, three or four times since I've been here and nothing crazy, it was just like, hey, let's turn it on on the low-grade snowstorm so we can kind of see what the processes look like, and everyone got a lot of good feedback from it and everyone's really enjoyed getting more into that flow of just working together and communicating across work systems.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I know you've made a huge impact on the city and your time here with us and that's just one thing that you've done that everyone's benefited from, so we really appreciate it, nick, for coming on the Insider Vada podcast. Really enjoyed hearing more about what you do and your work and how important it is for our community, so thank you so much. Thank you, guys.

Speaker 1:

Thanks.

Speaker 1:

So before we let you go, today, as always, we have our news and events segment of the show, and first, as you know from chatting with Nick today, it's National Preparedness Month in September, and we just want to reiterate to you know, do your part.

Speaker 1:

A lot of what we talked about today with Nick were some tips for how you, as the individual, can be prepared for in the case of an emergency. It's always, you know, what we don't want to have happen, but you want to be prepared just in case, and so the one really important step is signing up for those lookout alerts at lookoutalertco and think about making a plan for your own home, what kind of documents you need to get together, having a home emergency kit, those sorts of things where you can really learn more on that readygov website. And additionally, during National Preparedness Month, arvada Fire Safety Day is coming up with the Arvada Fire Department. That's going to be on September 28th from 10 am to 2 pm at the Arvada Training Center, which is out on Indiana Street 6651 Indiana Street and you can learn more about that on the Arvada Fire website. That's arvadafirecogov slash safety day, and we'll link to all of this, of course, as always, in our show notes.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and then coming up here on Friday September 6th at Woodrun Park is our final movies around town of the year, and that'll feature the winner of our People's Choice movie poll. As always, we'll have some live music before that and the movie will begin around dusk. And then, finally, the city is hosting a community open house for the development of Arvada's first climate action and sustainability plan. So there's been a lot of community engagement throughout the development of the plan and this is kind of the final chance for people to weigh in on the draft of that plan. That community open house is Wednesday, october 16th at the Arvada Library in Old Town.

Speaker 1:

And we forgot to mention. The Bike-Friendly Community Survey is still open for anyone who's interested in cycling in the Arvada community. This is a part of the city being designated as a bike-friendly community. We've had that designation since 2010, and this is just a part of We've had that designation since 2010, and this is just a part of the process of maintaining that designation. We're asking for feedback from those who do or would like to cycle in Arvada.

Speaker 2:

Glad you mentioned that survey, katie. And then, yeah, once again, thank you to our guest today, nick Adams. To stay in touch with the podcast, you can visit our website at arvadacogov slash podcast and on that page you can subscribe to our show or send us an email at podcast arvadaorg. You can ask us questions in that email. You can provide feedback. You can just say hello, we've got stickers and if you want a sticker, you can ask us for a sticker and we can mail you one. Or meet you at city hall and give you a sticker. Um, so thank you again for listening. Um, as a reminder, help us share the podcast through promoting with friends, family, coworkers always helps to give us a rating and, uh, to subscribe to the show as well. Today's podcast was recorded and edited by Arvada media services producers James Long and Steve Milky. I'll leave you with the fun fact of the episode Lookout Alert. The emergency notification system we've been talking about was named after Lookout Mountain in Golden.

Speaker 1:

Whoa.