Emergency Services

Emer­gency events and nat­ur­al dis­as­ters also have an effect on the health and safe­ty of New Cas­tle res­i­dents. The New Cas­tle Police Depart­ment; Chap­paqua, Mill­wood and Mount Kisco Fire Depart­ments; and the Chap­paqua, Ossin­ing and Mount Kisco Vol­un­teer Ambu­lance Corps all pro­vide emer­gency ser­vices to Town res­i­dents. Depend­ing upon the nature of each emer­gency event, police and fire ser­vices from sur­round­ing towns pro­vide addi­tion­al assis­tance. The Town has an Emergency/​Disaster Oper­at­ing Pro­ce­dures Plan that estab­lish­es the respon­si­bil­i­ties of emer­gency respon­ders and Town deci­sion mak­ers in emer­gen­cies, as well as the course of action to take rel­a­tive to the scale of the emer­gency event. In times of emer­gency, the Town oper­ates a rapid emer­gency alert sys­tems called Code Red and NIXLE which send out crit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty alerts such as evac­u­a­tion notices, boil water notices, and miss­ing child reports. The sys­tem is vol­un­tary and alerts res­i­dents who have reg­is­tered to receive alerts through the system.

The Town’s All Haz­ard Mit­i­ga­tion Plan was devel­oped in 2009 and updat­ed in 2015 as part of Westch­ester County’s Haz­ard Mit­i­ga­tion Plan Update. The plan iden­ti­fies nat­ur­al haz­ards to which the Town is vul­ner­a­ble, includ­ing severe storms and floods, as well as spe­cif­ic flood prone areas through­out the Town. The plan out­lines the Town’s plan­ning, admin­is­tra­tive, tech­ni­cal, fis­cal, and reg­u­la­to­ry capa­bil­i­ties in deal­ing with haz­ards and sets out a haz­ard mit­i­ga­tion action plan spe­cif­ic to New Cas­tle. Of note, the plan acknowl­edges that the Town cur­rent­ly does not have a Post Dis­as­ter Recov­ery Plan or Ordinance.

Imple­ment­ing both mit­i­ga­tion and adap­ta­tion mea­sures to deal with and recov­er from increas­ing­ly fre­quent and intense weath­er events has nev­er been more impor­tant. Chap­ter 2: Har­mo­ny with Nature dis­cussed a vari­ety of cli­mate change impacts that have been observed in New York State and across the north­east­ern Unit­ed States. Accord­ing to the New York State Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Con­ser­va­tion (DEC), between 1958 and 2010, the amount of pre­cip­i­ta­tion falling in very heavy weath­er events increased more than 70% in the north­east. While win­ter snow cov­er is decreas­ing, New York is get­ting more pre­cip­i­ta­tion in the win­ter and less in the sum­mer. Last­ly, the annu­al aver­age tem­per­a­ture across the state has risen about 2.4 degrees Fahren­heit since 1970 and is expect­ed to con­tin­ue to rise. All of these fac­tors can lead to major and more fre­quent nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, as well as oth­er unusu­al weath­er pat­terns (e.g. intense heat waves, tem­po­rary droughts) that can dis­rupt the dai­ly lives and affect the health and safe­ty of Town residents.

In Novem­ber of 2016, the Town estab­lished a Com­mu­ni­ty Pre­pared­ness Com­mit­tee (CPC) to assist the Town Board in improv­ing emer­gency pre­pared­ness through leg­isla­tive action, cross juris­dic­tion­al plan­ning, and res­i­dent edu­ca­tion and train­ing. This Plan sets forth a num­ber of actions the Town should take to sup­port the CPC and more thor­ough­ly pre­pare for and more eas­i­ly adapt to these changes in cli­mate, which will include the cre­ation of a Post Dis­as­ter Recov­ery Plan. Fur­ther­more, in the con­text of the Town’s plan­ning for diverse and alter­na­tive hous­ing for all types of pop­u­la­tions, this Plan estab­lish­es goals to help lessen the impacts of emer­gency sit­u­a­tions and nat­ur­al dis­as­ters on more vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions, or pop­u­la­tions that might lack suf­fi­cient phys­i­cal or fis­cal abil­i­ties to deal with, recov­er from, or adapt to these situations.