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City Council Regular Meeting Minutes June 11, 2013 Page 3 1 preparations before disasters, and provides analysis of impending disasters; in addition, 2 Emergency Management provides recovery assistance, e.g., the north Minneapolis tornado and 3 the recent Oklahoma tornado. He advised that Emergency Management is involved in situational 4 awareness, e.g., potential wind situations, and provides messaging to other agencies to prepare 5 their teams for potential threats. He indicated that Emergency Management has a watch leader 6 program where the watch leader is the primary point of contact for agencies and is responsible 7 for checking in with agencies that track and forecast emergencies, whether natural disasters, 8 industrial hazards, or adversarial threats. He stated the County is in the process of placing 9 weather stations throughout the west metro intended to provide early warning to take appropriate 10 action, adding there is a wind threshold for sirens of 70 mph and the County's weather stations 11 help disprove or prove that threshold and reduce unnecessary sirens. He explained that 12 Emergency Management has begun a partnership with Clear Channel to provide signage to alert 13 drivers to threatening weather conditions and Clear Channel has agreed to preempt their 14 advertising to provide tornado messaging in areas under threat. He stated the County also has six 15 signs along the 494 corridor that will be used for this purpose and are intended to complement 16 the outdoor warning sirens. He discussed Emergency Management's response recovery efforts 17 in assisting incident commanders and providing assistance in prioritizing and allocating needed 18 resources. He stated the Medina Emergency Operations Center was recently upgraded with new 19 technology that provides an important platform for coordinating multi agency and multi 20 jurisdictional responses. 21 22 Councilmember Roth asked where Minnesota stands in terms of preparedness compared to the 23 rest of the country. 24 25 Mr. Waage stated there is currently no data that ranks the states and indicated Minnesota 26 received a lot of positive feedback after the 35W bridge collapse and this incident is used as an 27 example nationally of how responders can work together. He added the State receives a number 28 of requests from other states for assistance and provided crews in response to Hurricane Sandy 29 after being requested specifically by Massachusetts and New York to assist in their efforts. 30 31 Councilmember Stille asked if there is technology available that can pinpoint where events will 32 occur and alert people on their cell phones. 33 34 Mr. Waage replied there is a program through the National Weather Service called Wireless 35 Emergency Alerts (WEA) that provides these types of targeted alerts based on the nearest cell 36 phone tower. He stated most newer smartphones have this capability and the top four cell phone 37 providers can provide this capability. 38 39 Mayor Faust thanked Mr. Waage for his presentation and thanked him for his past military 40 service and his service to Hennepin County. 41 42 VII. REPORTS FROM CITY MANAGER AND COUNCIL MEMBERS. 43 44 City Manager Casey reported the City will be participating with the Chamber of Commerce on a 45 Business Retention and Expansion Program, an outreach program to meet with local businesses. 46 He advised he recently met with representatives from Industrial Custom Products, an award - 47 winning manufacturer with forty full-time employees. He extended his thanks to them for the