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Q&A
Process of activating the heat emergency plan
0:48:03
·
4 min
Christina Farrell provides a detailed explanation of the process for activating the heat emergency plan in New York City. She outlines the steps from initial monitoring to full activation and post-emergency procedures.
- The process begins with continuous monitoring of National Weather Service forecasts
- Triggers for activation include heat indices of 95°F or higher for 2+ days, or 100°F for any duration
- Early communication with partners, public, and elected officials is prioritized
- An interagency heat call is set up to coordinate efforts across city departments and partners
- The plan includes updating cooling center maps, conducting press conferences, and monitoring cooling center usage
- Special considerations are made for holidays, weekends, and pet owners
- Post-emergency procedures include deactivation and preparing for future events
Lynn C. Schulman
0:48:03
Can you walk us through the process of activating the heat emergency plan just like step by step?
Christina Farrell
0:48:10
Sure.
0:48:11
Thanks.
0:48:12
So we our watch command is, you know, our eyes and our ears, they're twenty four seven.
0:48:19
So they are monitoring National Weather Service forecasts, you know, continuously.
0:48:25
And once they start to see, it could be as as much as five to six days out.
0:48:31
Once they start to see that we might get close to hitting the triggers, the triggers which I think Carrie mentioned are a heat indices of 95 degrees or higher for two or more days or a heat indices of 100 degrees for any amount of time.
0:48:45
Once they see that we might be hitting those triggers, they will talk to our on call team, they'll talk to me, to the commissioner, and we'll start to monitor internally to see if, you know, if there's any confidence, if we think it's really gonna get to that level.
0:49:02
We will also our human services unit will start to reach out to our partners because as we said, many of them, you know, they're nonprofits, they may have smaller staff, they may not be open every day.
0:49:15
And so we try to give them they have let us know over the years that they would much rather get an early heads up and then it turns out we don't have to activate, know, which is better than on a Sunday calling them and saying, the forecast has changed.
0:49:31
Can you all open tomorrow morning?
0:49:33
So we will be very proactive with them.
0:49:35
We will also start messaging to the public, not to scare anyone, but just so people are aware, so they can start to make plans, you know maybe start to look in on people that might be more vulnerable.
0:49:47
We'll definitely give a heads up to elected officials, to our nonprofit and other partners.
0:49:53
Once we get within a few days and we can see that we have confidence that we probably will be in a heat emergency, we set up an interagency heat call that can have upwards of a hundred people on it, know, all city partners, nonprofit, our our the library systems, all of them and then we'll have state partners, regional partners and we'll go through, make sure that people understand, is it gonna be, you know, extreme heat?
0:50:18
Is it going be regular heat emergency?
0:50:20
Or is it going to be something where we're going look for extended hours?
0:50:23
Or that, are we hitting a federal holiday?
0:50:25
You know, there's Memorial Day, there's Juneteenth, July fourth, Labor Day.
0:50:29
These are all holidays where we could have a heat emergency.
0:50:33
Is it going to go over a weekend?
0:50:35
Which can be more challenging?
0:50:37
I will say Wednesdays are the best day for a heat emergency.
0:50:41
Almost every almost every facility is open on Wednesday.
0:50:46
So, you know, but we can't we don't get that lucky.
0:50:49
And so then, you know, what we also do is once we know that we're moving towards a heat emergency, we're working on the messaging.
0:50:55
Our GIS unit is also looking because do we have to update the map?
0:51:00
Is anybody offline?
0:51:02
Because their air conditioning broke, because they have construction, you know, they have something else going on.
0:51:07
And so we will do that.
0:51:09
We usually will have a press conference.
0:51:11
We'll have the health department, aging city hall so we can let people know and then we'll continue to monitor throughout the heat emergency.
0:51:19
We send our citywide incidents coordinators kind of as secret shoppers.
0:51:24
I know elected officials do too, Gail Brewer's staff loves to do that.
0:51:29
But you know to go into the sites and to see is it open, is there signage, they all have signage in 14 languages, but you know sometimes there can be a little error and so you know we want people to find them, we want them to use the locations and then at the end of every day we get a census, so we'll see you know are people going to them.
0:51:50
One thing we haven't talked about is you know people will not go to a cooling center if they have to leave their pet at home because it can be dangerous for cats, for dogs.
0:52:00
And so a couple years ago we opened up a partnership with Petco.
0:52:05
So they are on our cooling center map now.
0:52:07
They are well utilized.
0:52:08
I go to the Petco in College Point to check out to see how things are going.
0:52:12
And so you know that that's another thing that we will advertise.
0:52:15
We don't want anyone staying home putting themselves at risk because they don't want to lose their dog, you know, they don't want to leave their dog at home.
0:52:24
And so that is kind of the overall.
0:52:27
We'll do a report at the end, we'll deactivate the cooling center finder and we'll get ready for the next one.