{"id":804637,"date":"2020-02-26T13:30:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-26T20:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=379569"},"modified":"2020-02-26T13:30:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-26T20:30:00","slug":"summit-express-owner-honored-with-emergency-management-award-for-plan-to-evacuate-in-home-care-facilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/summit-express-owner-honored-with-emergency-management-award-for-plan-to-evacuate-in-home-care-facilities\/","title":{"rendered":"Summit Express owner honored with emergency management award for plan to evacuate in-home care facilities"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Bob Roppel was honored with the 2019 Colorado Emergency Management Association Public\/Private Partnership Award on Wednesday night in Loveland. <\/strong>
Courtesy Bob Roppel<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

FRISCO \u2014 A Summit County local is being recognized by the Colorado Emergency Management Association for his efforts to improve evacuation operations during major emergencies in the area.<\/p>\n

Silverthorne resident Bob Roppel was honored with the 2019 Colorado Emergency Management Association Public\/Private Partnership Award during the 2020 Colorado Emergency Management Conference on Wednesday evening in Loveland. The award was established to commemorate individuals around the state that have made considerable efforts to improve emergency operations through strong collaboration with government agencies. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a big deal,\u201d said Brian Bovaird, Summit County\u2019s emergency management director, who nominated Roppel for the award. \u201cThis is handed out by (the Colorado Emergency Management Association), which is different from the state\u2019s emergency management department. This is a professional organization, and every year they have this conference with representatives from emergency management, public health and other disciplines. With 64 counties there, for this partnership to be recognized and showcased ahead of all the others is pretty special.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conversations between Roppel and Bovaird began soon after the Buffalo Mountain Fire<\/a> that scorched 91 acres and crawled to within spitting distance of the Wildernest and Mesa Cortina neighborhoods near Silverthorne in June 2018. Roppel, who owns the Summit Express shuttle service, knew he had the resources to help but lacked the coordination and planning.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Summit Stage was assisting with that fire, and we wanted to help, too,\u201d Roppel said. \u201cWe have lots of staff and vehicles in the area, but I just didn\u2019t have the right contacts to assist. After the dust settled, I reached out and said I have a lot of resources in this county \u2014 a lot of drivers and dispatchers \u2014 and we\u2019re ready to help evacuate. I wanted to make sure we were set up to help in the future, and that\u2019s what teed things up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roppel said his service maintains 36 vehicles and more than 100 employees, mostly in Summit County. But it wasn\u2019t immediately obvious how to best put them to use in the event of another wildfire or some other emergency. Bovaird said it wasn\u2019t until months after Roppel approached him, when he was meeting with local in-home child care providers, that he had a flash of insight.<\/p>\n

Bovaird\u2019s idea, which has since been established as a new protocol for the county\u2019s evacuation plan, is to have Summit Express resources \u2014 including vehicles, drivers and dispatchers \u2014 in charge of evacuating children and staff from licensed in-home day care centers.<\/p>\n

In the event of an evacuation, the day care\u2019s owner would contact Summit Express directly, and the organization\u2019s dispatchers would send a shuttle to take the kids and staff to a predetermined location. According to Bovaird, Summit Express dispatchers and day care staff around the county have been trained in the new policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was sitting down with some of the day care owners to hear about what their concerns are with emergencies and where they could use some help,\u201d Bovaird said. \u201cOne of the things that they pointed to was evacuations. If there\u2019s an evacuation, these in-home facilities don\u2019t have a safe means to safely and efficiently get the kids out of that area. I reached out to Bob and he was completely on board. \u2026 It\u2019s a simple solution that creates a great capability that wasn\u2019t there before he stepped up. He\u2019s helping to make our community more resilient. In the midst of a real emergency, it\u2019s one less thing to worry about and one less thing that can fall through the cracks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite helping to fill a vital gap in the county\u2019s emergency response policies, Roppel said being given the award was a complete surprise.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was shocked and honored,\u201d Roppel said. \u201cJust quite honestly, I\u2019m shocked that someone would nominate me for something of this caliber. And I\u2019m honored to be able to help Summit County in the event that they need us \u2014 to give back with the resources we\u2019ve built over the last 10 years of being here.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bob Roppel was honored with the 2019 Colorado Emergency Management Association Public\/Private Partnership Award on Wednesday night in Loveland. Courtesy Bob Roppel FRISCO \u2014 A Summit County local is being recognized by the Colorado Emergency Management Association for his efforts to improve evacuation operations during major emergencies in the area. Silverthorne resident Bob Roppel was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-804637","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-21 15:12:30","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}