Live Well, Age Well – And Communicate Well – At Covia

By Karen Kemp, systems analyst and project manager, Covia

I’ll never forget the morning of the fires in Napa and Sonoma counties. I was walking my dog and got a text saying, “Can you get to Spring Lake Village?”

Spring Lake Village is one of our six Life Plan communities. I thought, “Okay, but why?” Then, I saw this big mushroom cloud over the hills, west of my house.

I went inside and told my husband, “I don’t know what it is, and I’ve never seen anything like it, but something is wrong.”

As it turned out, some of the staff at Spring Lake Village couldn’t get to the campus because of the way the fires were moving and spreading. The cell service on campus was limited, but I could communicate with on-duty staff at Spring Lake Village because they were wearing their Vocera® Badges, which are communication devices that run on the campus Wi-Fi. We used the Vocera system to coordinate the evacuation plan with staff and residents at the community. As a result, we were very fortunate everyone got out safely and quickly.