Emergency Management and Planning

Our mission is to provide a proactive framework through the coordination of resources and activities and pre-planned mechanisms to effectively mitigate hazards, ensure efficient response and recovery efforts, to safeguard the lives and property and minimize the effects of emergencies and disasters on the residents and businesses within the Town of Colonie.

Contact

Paul Sugrue, EMS Chief

New York State Emergency Information

NY-ALERT is the New York State All-Hazards Alert and Notification web-based Portal. This portal offers one-stop shopping through which State and local governments can provide emergency information to a defined audience (local, county, regional or statewide).

The public can use RSS (Real Simple Syndicate) reader technology to begin receiving automatic updates from NY-ALERT for events statewide, or for just their community. You are able to subscribe on the NY-ALERT website to receive emergency information via email, phone call (traditional, VOIP, or cell), fax, or via cell phone or pager text messages.

Citizen Corps

Stressing the need for volunteer efforts in areas of crime, natural disasters, and terrorism, President George W. Bush introduced Citizen Corps as part of the USA Freedom Corps program. Citizen Corps is a federal initiative that aims to harness volunteer spirit and create better-prepared citizens, neighborhoods, and communities, through education, training and volunteer service.

Citizen Corps Councils, which coordinate volunteer initiatives at the state and local levels, help make communities safer, stronger, and better prepared to respond to the threats of terrorism, crime, public health issues, and disasters of all kinds.

The Albany County Special Needs Registry

The Albany County Special Needs Registry is a voluntary registry of individuals who would require assistance in the event of an emergency. This assistance could be as simple as advising emergency responders of a patient's medications if called to a medical response or of those who need evacuation assistance in the event of a natural or man-made emergency. This registry alerts emergency responders as to resident locations and gives them the vital information they need to better meet the resident's special needs.

Participation in the registry is voluntary and all information is strictly confidential, used only for emergency purposes. The Town of Colonie Emergency Management & Planning Office has been working with Albany County to make this program available to qualified residents within the Town of Colonie.

Our department's mission is to assess and plan for hazards and emergencies and work with other public safety and municipal agencies to ensure public welfare. As a pre-planning tool, the Special Needs Registry should be considered strongly for all people who have special medical needs (i.e. oxygen or life support systems that are dependent upon electrical power) or have physical disabilities that would make it difficult to evacuate independently if the need arose.

For more information on this service, contact the Emergency Medical Services Department.