Pender Islands' Neighbourhood Program

Neighbours Helping Neighbours

Overview of Neighbourhood Program

The Neighbourhood Program serves to help residents in the face of an emergency or disaster. The Program is based on the idea of neighbours helping neighbours. When neighbours are prepared to help each other, many hardships can be lessened or avoided. In the case of a large scale emergency such as an earthquake, forest fire, or snow storm, it may not be possible for emergency services to reach all households rapidly. In such situations, the Neighbourhood Program is a useful tool in assisting people. 

The Pender Islands are broken into 85 pre-identified neighbourhoods, each with a volunteer Neighbourhood Contact and an Alternate. The Neighbourhood Program Coordinator oversees all the neighbourhoods and reports to the Island Emergency Program Co-coordinators. 

The Neighbourhood Program is intended to: 

Neighbourhoods are organized into zones to facilitate communications during emergencies. Zones are as follows:


CRD’S Public Alert Notification System (PANS) 

now using Alertable

Many Southern Gulf Islands residents have subscribed to the CRD’s free Public Alert Notification System PANS.  A few years ago, the CRD changed providers and is now using the ALERTABLE system to send important alerts concerning emergencies, disasters, imminent threats (e.g., wildfires, floods, hazardous spills) and local incidents (e.g., gas leak or boil water advisories) in your community.  This changeover required you to re-register.

To ensure that you are registered for this free emergency service, go to www.crd.bc.ca/pans.

In addition to registering for phone, text and/or email notifications, residents are encouraged to download the Alertable app or visit www.alertable.ca to receive additional advisory information such as service disruption notifications, weather warnings, or road safety information.

Signing up for Alertable is also free, and easy to do from your mobile phone tablet, or computer.  Get started by going to http://alertable.ca/signup/index.html.  You can choose what type of notifications you wish to receive.  You can even choose notifications for more than one location:  your home, the office, your family and friends’ locations, and more.

This on-line system augments the neighbourhood telephone trees which are maintained by the Neighbourhood Contact and overseen by the Neighbourhood Program Coordinator.

 

On Pender

If you would like to become involved in the Pender Islands Neighbourhood Program, please reach out to your Neighbourhood Contact (see map). If there is no contact information listed for your Neighbourhood then get in touch with the Neighbourhood Program Coordinator.