We don't have the reverse 911. It's only good for the Ontario portion of Akwesasne. I wanted to start something called CERT, community emergency response teams. They are almost like a neighbourhood watch, neighbourhood groups that we would create.
Akwesasne is kind of one big family, so everybody knows everybody. Everybody knows who's the elder and who lives alone. We would create these little teams and have them do door-to-door checks if we needed to evacuate or things like that, but we don't have any reverse 911 or alert system, because our phone numbers are both American and Canadian, so you can't do that. It would just have to be the old-school way, door to door. You knock on the door to see if they're okay.
We also use social media. As well, we have our own local radio station, which is our lifeline to Akwesasne. If there is a power outage or evacuation or winter storms, everybody tunes in to CKON. In the past we have given these kits that have three to five days' worth of food, water, a little radio, a flashlight and batteries. We would deliver them door to door and give them to our community so they could at least turn on the radio and have some way to be in touch with first responders.