Located in northern Colorado and bordered by three larger municipalities, the town of Windsor (pop. 48,000) has maintained its small-town charm despite being one of Colorado’s fastest growing communities. And we have the continued distinction of being one of the safest cities in Colorado. One challenge for Windsor is that the perception of the community, elected officials, and oftentimes staff is that “nothing bad ever happens here.” Why prepare for the worst when things appear to be going so well?

While it’s true that apart from an EF3 tornado that surprised the community in 2008—leaving devastation in its wake though thankfully no loss of life—Windsor has an enviable history of not needing to worry about the worst-case scenario. But as we all know, hope is not a strategy. Bad things can happen anywhere at any time, and preparing for the worst is the only responsible thing to do. 

My time in the military taught me a valuable lesson: you plan, you practice the plan, you talk about what went wrong, you revise your plan, and then you repeat the process. And in local government, emergency management applies those same techniques.

A few of Windsor’s ongoing efforts in proper planning and process improvement really highlight the vision, talent, and leadership of our office of emergency management and police department. Our town is blessed to have Carlee Porch as our emergency management coordinator. Although she has been with the organization for less than two years, our program has matured by a decade under her leadership, and my confidence in our ability to properly plan and respond to any incident has grown tenfold.

Event Planning and After-Action Review

Windsor hosts 85 events annually in our wonderful parks system, with our largest annual event, the Windsor Harvest Festival, bringing 11,000 to our downtown on its busiest day. Like many growing communities, while our event frequency and size had grown over time, we were managing most of our events with limited oversight and planning. One of the first requests from our special event staff when we hired Carlee was to help develop a process to ensure a safe and secure event. Staff recognized that our events had outgrown our ability to successfully manage any real crisis.

In the Windsor pre-planning process, each department that will be involved in the actual event participates in drafting the plan, including emergency management, public works, police, parks and recreation, and the fire department. The event requirements change based on the expected size of the crowd; as an example, any event that includes at least 500 people requires an ambulance on site.

Every pre-planning event will establish command and control (who is in charge), how many people from each department need to work at the event (e.g., number of officers), road closures, mapping, and a public communication portion. All roles and responsibilities are laid out in this pre-planning document, so if anything goes wrong, the pre-planning document has already identified the appropriate steps to take.

The after-action review (AAR) typically occurs within a week after the event and helps the town identify opportunities for improvement and associated corrective actions. An improvement plan is developed as a part of this plan, and every corrective action listed is assigned to a responsible party with a deadline. These actions can include anything from providing better maps to the public to closing off a different street for traffic. Finally, the next planning cycle for the event starts with the AAR to ensure that we begin with our lessons learned from the previous year.

Virtual Emergency Operations Center

Most local governments likely have a protocol in place for standing up an emergency operations center (EOC). In Windsor, we also operate a virtual center with three stages of activation: virtual, partial, and full.

Under the virtual stage, we monitor an emergency or crisis situation via Microsoft Teams, allowing us to communicate from anywhere, share documents, and set up calls from the platform. It was very helpful this previous winter when we experienced many high wind events in northern Colorado. It enabled our personnel to closely monitor power outages damage and to plan for coordinated response from remote locations.

Once we move into the second or third phase (partial or full activation), our key personnel and sister agencies will meet in person in the traditional EOC. However, we still utilize the virtual platform to share documents and invite stakeholders to participate, including local hospitals, state representatives, the Red Cross, and elected officials. We also use the platform to download and archive documents in preparation for FEMA financial reimbursement down the road.

Together, these capabilities reflect a growing organizational commitment to preparedness—one that recognizes emergency management is not defined by whether a community has experienced disaster recently, but by whether it’s ready when the next challenge comes.

SHANE HALE, ICMA-CM, is town manager for Windsor, Colorado. He is a U.S. Navy veteran and a member of ICMA’s Veterans Advisory Committee.