Dan Nelson, Borough Incident Commander, and Brenda Ahlberg, Information Officer, will be hosting a community conversation on Monday, March 30th at 7 p.m. The special guest for the conversation will be Derotha Ferraro, Director of Public Relations & Marketing at South Peninsula Hospital in Homer.
According to Brenda Ahlberg, they will be asking questions about SPH’s plans and how they relate to the city and other related entities: “We’re gonna be asking them questions specific to what the hospital is doing, as well as the fact that the city and the hospital and other agencies are working under what’s called the Unified Command. So, we’ll be asking them, firstly, what does that mean because a lot of people don’t know what Unified Command means. Also, how is that affecting their operation in a positive perspective, since now they’ve got several entities that are collaborating together. Also, just exactly what are they looking at doing in the future with regards to volunteerism and donations – that is vast becoming quite the topic, and how are they addressing that right now.”
For those who have already been watching their daily alerts, Ms. Ahlberg says that the format will be very similar to what they typically do: “It’ll be the same format, yes. We’ll have Dan do an update and then we’ll roll into the conversation with the participant.”
She also noted that the plan is always to give as much information as possible, but to do so in a tactful manner that protects the privacy of affected individuals as much as possible: “It’s really a balance because we have to protect people’s privacy. We also understand that people want information. How is this going to affect them personally, and then at the same time, we don’t want to risk the exposure of an individual that now potentially could be scrutinized or shamed because of it. Sadly, I’ve heard of these cases in the lower-48 where people are being stigmatized for being a positive case, which just breaks my heart.”
The conversation will be able to be viewed on Facebook by searching for @KPBalerts.
