On Friday, Jan. 31, GOOD Morning Wilton editor Heather Borden Herve sat down with Wilton’s Fire Chief Jim Blanchfield and Police Chief Tom Conlan. Together, the two lead Emergency Management in the Town of Wilton, with Blanchfield as the Director and Conlan as the Deputy Director. The two officials have worked closely to implement and improve how the town keeps the community safe in the face of emergency situations.
GMW: The idea for this interview originally started with the introduction of the town’s new emergency alert system.
Emergency Management Director/Fire Chief Jim Blanchfield: Everbridge, yes. I thought it would be a good opportunity just to talk about what we do from an emergency management standpoint in the town of Wilton. Emergency management’s a little different [in Wilton].
Between me and [Police Chief] Tom [Conlan], we are responsible to make sure we have a local Emergency Operation Plan, which covers what to do from the town side in the case of really any emergency you can think of.
If you remember, in 2023 we had to deal with smoke coming in from Canada’s wildfires. We were getting questions from all sorts of businesses and daycares about air quality, how to handle it. That’s just one example. We had the floods in August — we’ve planned for that. We’ve had discussions at the state level where they talk about undocumented migrants, making sure each community has a plan in that regard.
In addition to hurricanes, in addition to the law enforcement side of things, we try to have a basic plan in place for just about anything that we can think of, and to make sure it works for the town. And then we train on those plans.
GMW: How frequently do your two departments collaborate and work to train on practice exercises?
Emergency Management Deputy Director/Police Chief Tom Conlan: When [former Police] Chief John Lynch was leaving, he was the Emergency Management Director, and [then-First Selectwoman] Lynne [Vanderslice] was deciding who should be the next one. Jim had been the fire chief for a couple years by then, so he was definitely interested in getting involved with emergency management. I was all for that. The best approach is either one of us be the EMD and one of us be the deputy EMD. I was just taking over as [police] chief so it was good for me to stay as the deputy until I learned more how to be a police chief.
But the important thing was, now we both share all that information [for] emergency management. All the emails that come from the Department of Emergency Management at the state level and at Region One (which is pretty much Fairfield County), we both share all that information. In the past — no fault of anybody’s, there’s just so much going on — it just didn’t get shared. It was important that we should both have some part in it, so that all that information comes to both of our departments.
From a training aspect, it’s created a partnership. So when we might respond to an active aggressor incident at any of Wilton’s schools or businesses, the fire department’s involved, EMS is involved, and nothing gets missed. That was huge from our approach of the town, that both agencies have a say or are sharing information in Emergency Management.
GMW: Is that unusual?
Blanchfield: I wouldn’t call it unusual, but I don’t think many municipalities set it up this way. With us, the collaboration is real, specifically with the emergency management side of it. I wouldn’t want to do it any other way, as Tom said. There’s so many different factors to this, but I don’t think there’s one emergency in town that PD and Fire don’t work together on in some capacity. PD has the lead in some, Fire has the lead in some, in some cases EMS may have more of an active role.
As far as training, we train together. Pretty much every year we do something, and then there’s also training events that either we bring them in or the state brings them in. One example was, this year the state did election security. They simulated different events that could happen during an election on the actual Election Day, ranging from an issue with the ballot drop box or a white powder call, any sorts of things.
Wilton’s participation level was excellent. We had not only police and fire, but we had our registrars there, we had a Health Department rep there, EMS, CERT, [Town Administrator] Matt Knickerbocker was there. In Wilton, it extends beyond Emergency Management, beyond Police and Fire. It’s really collaborative with all the other agencies, and we make it a priority to get them involved so they know they have a role in it, and they’re not surprised when something comes up. Social Services has a big role in things as well. There’s a lot there.
GMW: From an operational standpoint, how often does everybody meet together?
Blanchfield: Tom and I probably talk or email at least once a day. From the Emergency Management side, we meet at least once every three weeks or a month, whether it’s here or at a meeting put on by Region One, where all emergency management personnel are there monthly. Then there subgroups of that — school security groups, ES-4, ES-8. We’re meeting in person at least once every two weeks.
Conlan: ‘ES’ are Emergency Services Functions — ESF groups. At the regional level, there’s maybe 15 or 20 different groups like that. ESF-4 is Fire; PD is ESF-13. So both of us being involved in emergency management, we get all that information at these meetings every month, from all of those chairs from those different regional groups. So a regional police chief sits on the ESF-13 group and gets all the information at the state level, and then we get that information at the monthly regional meeting, usually in Fairfield.
Blanchfield: We also meet once a month with our Wilton CERT [Community Emergency Response Team] team, which falls under Emergency Management, either in-person or Zoom with those folks too, both Tom and myself.
GMW: Tell readers, especially people new to Wilton, how critical it is to have volunteer participation from the community with CERT.
Conlan: I can’t say enough good things about Wilton CERT. I think they have over 100, 120 active members? You can pretty much count on 15 or 20 of them to always be there for you. For the bigger events, we need the bigger group. For example, when we have the CT United Motorcycle Ride that comes through town, or the July Fourth fireworks, we’ll need anywhere from 40-50 CERT volunteers to assist with that.
They are the unsung heroes of Wilton. Anytime we need anything, we use them. Right now we have power lines down on Range Rd., so we need to set up a detour. In years past, we’d have to have the firemen go out there with cones or barricades. Now it’s just a simple call to to the CERT members. They come in, they grab the truck, they go out, they keep their equipment Grade-A and within a half-hour, they have signs up and a whole detour set up. They’re a great resource. It means it doesn’t take fire and police assets out of the town when we have to respond to other things.
I’ve heard from other chiefs at Region One meetings, they say, “Those Wilton CERTs are the best.” Bob Kenny, who’s the Regional Director for DEMHS [CT Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security] for our Region One, he says, “Your Wilton CERTs are top of the line.”
Blanchfield: I echo what Tom says. CERT is absolutely the unsung backbone behind a lot of the operations in town and any emergencies, they have a role in every single one.
Conlan: They’re at a lot of the training exercises too.
Blanchfield: Yes, we like to include them in anything that we do in Emergency Management. We pretty much always have a CERT member involved too. When we open up our EOC [Emergency Operations Center] in person, they’ve been in the room as well. It’s a great relationship we have with them. We hope it continues.
GMW: Communications is such a big part of Emergency Management. Explain to people what’s going on with Wilton’s communication systems.
Blanchfield: Last year, we started a process migrating away from the old platform, and moving to a new one called Everbridge. Everbridge is a communication platform used not only by the state of Connecticut, but by a lot of our neighbors, to get the message out to townspeople regarding a whole host of things. We want to keep it to just emergencies so Wilton people know that when they get something from Everbridge, it’s important.
In addition to building out the Everbridge platform, we’ve kept the CivicPlus e-alerts notification process as well.
We’ve also added two social media accounts as well to communicate to the public, which are linked to Everbridge — an X account and Facebook account. We’re trying to do the best we can for the Wilton community. If something’s really important, we want to make sure they know.
Conlan: We really need to get the message out. Because the most important part of that system is that people sign up. Everbridge can go out over landlines. But what we really need is your cell phone number. With a lot of people no longer using a landline anymore, for getting texts and emails, that’s the number we really want.
Like any new system, there were some growing pains. When we were setting up the system, it was a little more robust than the last system, and lots more stuff was offered — weather alerts or red flags alerts. So we had checked that box — and it turns out red flag alerts go out at 4 a.m. every day when you have a red flag.
Blanchfield: We got pushback from some residents, and rightly so, they were getting red flag alerts at four or five in the morning. So Tom and I spent some time to make sure we’re not setting up passthroughs for people to be woken up when they really don’t need to be. It’s a work in progress and we’ve made some changes. We’re trying to find that middle ground where the public is alerted when they need to be but not when they’re not.
It’s critical that we get the message out when it needs to get out. We saw that during the August floods. Who knows when the next big emergency is going to be? We don’t know, but we want to make sure that that communication system, that plan, is set up to make sure anybody who needs to get the message, gets it.
Because the state uses Everbridge as well, they can send out direct messages to people, bypassing even the Town, to get something out immediately. They can geofence it, to limit it to a certain area. So there’s a lot of great function with this system.
GMW: You’ve also upgraded to a new radio network, right?
Conlan: Yes, that was just completed and it’s up and running. It’s been a two- or three-year process started under First Selectwoman Vanderslice. [It’s called Connecticut Land Mobile Radio Network.] It’s a lot more robust than our last system.
With the old system, we only had one PD frequency, one Fire Department frequency, one EMS frequency. That’s all we were allowed to use, so that’s all we could use. From the Police Department standpoint, we go to some calls, and (we don’t have a ton of these per year, but) there might be a barricaded person somewhere. We have a command post setup at that incident. And the frequency is being used just for that incident, because there’s a lot of talking going on — there’s perimeters being set up, talking back and forth to dispatch and people on scene, and so there’s a lot of traffic going on there. We didn’t have the ability to go to another channel.
Now, with this new system, we have two PD channels, a detective channel, a channel that we use for motor vehicle enforcement. Sometimes we work with other towns like Norwalk and New Canaan to do regional enforcement and that way we can bring in more officers and blanket an area. With this new system, we’re allowed to talk with Norwalk and New Canaan on all our radios when we’re doing an operation like that, as opposed to before, we all were in our different silos.
Ninety-nine percent of the time we’re probably just using our PD frequencies. But the FD for sure uses much more.
Blanchfield: Just about every single day, we’re using the multiple frequencies. For example, at a structure fire. We get mutual aid from anywhere between two to six different towns that come in. There’s a lot of radio traffic. When you’re dealing with a structure fire, it’s a very dangerous scene, and you don’t want a million different people talking on the same radio channel. Because with radios, only one person can talk at the same time. In that situation, this system allows us to move all incident communications to a tactical channel and keep another channel open for other emergencies in town at the same time, to keep it open for mutual aid companies coming in. So it’s really just a godsend for safety and communications for anybody responding to these scenes.
As well, we have a fire marshals’ channel that they can operate on their own. We could set up a water supply at an incident where they’re not stepping on the guys inside the building.
In addition, this new system has allowed the town of Wilton DPW to have radios, which has been fantastic for the town. Parks and Rec has radios. EMS is on the system, CERT even has a portion of it. It was such a good move for the town of Wilton, for the infrastructure of the town. And since we’re on the state system, keeping the system updated and upgraded properly is done going forward, rather than having budget constraints. It’s built out now, we are always in a good place relative to the technology we’re using.
Conlan: In the past, every 20-25, years, we would just spend $2 million or $4 million, or probably $6- or 8 million next time, to get a new system. Now, we spend a little bit more yearly, but the infrastructure — the three towers we have in town or dispatch — every year or two are getting new software, new hardware that we’re paying into. So hopefully, 20 years from now, the next person won’t have to go through a big project. It’ll just be there and work, and it’ll be brand new every other or so year. Going on the state system, you’re required to do it this way.
Blanchfield: DPW had the old police radios on a low band system, so the coverage was very poor, and it was a bit of a hazard. Like last night, we might have gotten some ice, they’re out plowing roads, and if it’s too slippery on hills in town like Scribner Hill Rd. or Branch Brook Rd. where you might slide off the side, they need a radio that’s covered everywhere in town, that if they say, “Hey, I need help. I’m over here,” we can send that help.
Conlan: Another thing on the Fire Department side, in our old system radio transmissions would go from incident scene to a radio tower to dispatch, and then back to them. And if there was ever any issues with a tower, or they were out of range somehow… Now we’ve got seven trucks, they all have in-vehicle repeaters. A fire truck on scene actually acts as a tower back to dispatch. Nothing will ever be missed.
Blanchfield: From a safety standpoint, imagine your firefighters at, let’s say a basement fire, or they’re deep in a big commercial building. Signals getting out and getting in, and going to towers are a little more challenging. The new system is much safer for anybody that uses it.
One of the big factors for us was Norwalk had already gone to the system. Westport had gone to the system. Fairfield is going. Weston has now gone to the system. If you don’t go to the system, you’re going to have a big challenge talking to those communities. Mutual aid is a big part of the Wilton Fire Department, so having community communications with our neighbors is critical. This was the best play for the town in all aspects.
GMW: So residents can feel reassured that you’re making Wilton an even safer community — is that the message you want people to know?
Blanchfield: We want to make sure people know we’re always working on making sure the community is safe, regardless of what is presented. We saw that with the floods most recently, and we’ve seen that with other incidents. There are always plans being made. We are always working with our other departments and department heads to make sure we provide the best services to this town that we can, and it’s something we work on all the time.
Conlan: With that last flood, I saw a little pushback from the community, they didn’t think they were notified, or thought they didn’t get information in a timely manner. Every road and everything was taken care of within 16 hours from when that event started. We had some flooding down by Newtown Tpke. and other areas of town, but all the roads that were shut down or had issues with flooding, within 16-18 hours they were all back open. We shared information as we could, like ‘stay inside, don’t go out,’ which was good information. But to list all the roads — which is what we would usually do during a hurricane which are, like, one-week or two-week-long events, so roads take forever to open — but that flooding incident was very localized. We just wanted people to stay inside. That’s the message we put out. Usually in an event like that, we won’t list every road that’s closed because they’re going to be open in 12 hours. As long as you just stay inside for the 12 hours, we’ll have it all open for a localized event. But a hurricane is different.
The important part of this interview is the Everbridge signup. We need people to sign up for that, because that’s how they’re going to find out urgent information. The e-alert system is more of weekly information, maybe there’s a town meeting or more non-critical information. Everbridge is for emergencies only.
GMW: And if recent events are any impetus for people to signup, the Los Angeles fires, the Philadelphia plane crash… People always say, “It could never happen here…”
Blanchfield: Look what happened in Berlin, CT, with the brushfires there.
And everybody’s got a cell phone. We promise we’re not going to overload you, but this is our best way to get the message out that you need to do something.
GMW: Speaking of everybody’s got a cell phone… With the discussion about no cell phones in the schools, some parents felt that in the case of an emergency, they wanted to be able to reach their child. From a safety and security standpoint, what’s your thought about that?
Conlan: As a parent of three kids — a 16-, 13-, and 10-year-old — I see the school’s perspective on it, that definitely these phones are taking away from the attention that the kids put into their schoolwork.
From from a law enforcement perspective, it’s a great idea to limit the use of cell phones in schools, not only if we have an incident at a school, whether it be an active aggressor or trespasser. A lot of times dispatch gets inundated with calls, and parents will start showing up at the schools. Even in Sandy Hook that was a problem — so many people showed up that they couldn’t get people out that needed medical attention, whether it was ambulances or cars or parents that blocked roadways… We don’t want everybody responding.
I understand people are fearful — I would be too — of what their child might be going through. But, at the schools, every classroom has a phone. In the main offices, there’s a radio that connects right to dispatch. They have a system called Alertus there. You’ll see them when you go into the schools, there are yellow boxes on the walls. If they hit that button it alerts all the other schools that there’s a lockdown, and it puts that other school in lockdown. It alerts dispatch instantaneously that somebody hit this alarm at that school. And we can call them on the radio. We can call them on their phone at the main office. We definitely have a connection to the schools from our dispatch center. So from a law enforcement perspective and a response perspective, limiting the cell phones helps us a lot.
Blanchfield: And there’s meetings pretty much monthly with all the schools and Police and Fire on school security. There’s a lot of interaction with the schools on all these issues.
Conlan: There was a Security Task Force set up after Sandy Hook, and then after a certain amount of time, that was retired; that group became the Emergency Operations Group. The fire marshals go to it, the school resource officers, usually another representative from my [Police] administration goes to it or myself, some townspeople, all the principals from all the schools, and Maria Coleman (who’s in charge of HR/operations at the schools). It’s a group of 15-20 people that meets every month to review school security issues.
Blanchfield: And [review] their plans, because the schools are required by state statute to submit their own emergency plans. Those come through emergency management, so Tom and I see those as well.
GMW: Is there anything else that you want to add?
Conlan: Like I said the beginning, the sharing of the roles here for both departments is the most important thing that ever happened to Emergency Management in this town. It definitely opens up avenues for both departments, which is better for the town.
Blanchfield: And we want to make sure the community feels that, no matter what emergency does come up, we have a plan in place, or we’re working on a plan. And when we do that, we then train on those plans, and that’s done in a relentless fashion, year after year, to make sure we close the gaps on any issues we find, and that’s continuing to get better. We appreciate every single person’s role in that, because it’s not just me and Tom — almost every department has some role in something that we do. And we try to make sure we train so everyone knows their roles. So a lot of behind the scenes work to keep emergencies handled properly in Wilton.
Residents can register online for the town’s new Everbridge Alerts emergency alert system.