Plan to divide Colorado Springs into over 600 evacuation zones launches

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) - A new evacuation plan that divides Colorado Springs into 665 zones officially launched Monday.

The new program, COS Ready, simplifies where to find alerts relating to evacuations. It also serves as a way to see which areas are under immediate threat. The plan passed in July with a unanimous vote and some community objections.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” said Chief Randy Royal with the Colorado Springs Fire Department, “it’s gonna help us manage evacuations more appropriately, it’s gonna be more flexible and it’s gonna give citizens and visitors information they need to be safe in our community.”

This comes a decade after the Waldo Canyon Fire. 11 News asked why it took so long, and the city said the technology wasn’t available yet. The fire department added that they had been working to divide the city into different zones since then. They went from no zones to over 70, but the information for where these were was only available for authorities.

Now, the 665 zones are there to view for the public.

Chief Royal also said that this system benefits police, as well, and that they can now place evacuation notices and shelter-in-place orders through the app.

Here’s how it works:

The new system involves three steps, all of which can be viewed at the COS Ready website.

-Sign up for alerts

-Know your zone

-Make a plan

As always, you can sign up for alerts through Peak Alerts.

The new part of the system is knowing your zone, which is step 2 on the website.

On the website, you can put in your address to find your zone and all of the alerts relating to it.

From there, it’s up to you to make a plan to get out, using the evacuation information from the map.

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