At the Spring 2016 KLCOA meeting, OPP advised us the best security system was to have neighbours keep an eye on each others’ properties. Unfortunately, there are many occurrences which can impact our lake properties where it would be helpful to notify the owner immediately, such as fallen trees, road washouts/blockages, major hydro outages, sinking boats due to high levels of rain and even fire.
Unfortunately, it is often difficult to find contact information for a property owner in an emergency. We understand that the Fire Department, for example, asks nearby neighbours or must consult the Dysart property roles and then search on Canada 411 to try to find contact information. KLCOA does not always have the best contact information for property owners in emergency situations, for privacy reasons we cannot generally give out contact information and we do not have contact information for non-members.
KLCOA strongly encourages property owners to group together and designate a “block captain” for your area (ideally someone who is at the lake much of the time) who can keep the name, address, contact phone numbers and other relevant information for property owners in their area. Participation is of course, voluntary.
In some areas, these neighbour networks already exist – and some have formed recently. If you would like, the block captain could let John Middleton (KLCOA Board Member who has leadership for security and road issues) know their name, contact information and the addresses for which they have the contact information at jmiddleton@sympatico.ca If someone needs to contact a property owner in an emergency, John could direct them to the block captain for more information.
We have put together a Neighbour Network Worksheet (this is a pdf document; if you wish an excel spreadsheet, email jmiddleton@sympatico.ca). This document is for the block captain to note key contact information for participants in their group (name, address, phone # at the lake, home, cell and email). We have provided a comment field for any special instructions like property owned by parent but contact is the son or daughter, etc. Once gathered, the information is shared only with your block captain or as your group decides – it is not intended to be a publicly distributed document. The voluntary private network you create will help each other during any major events.