City and community organizations recruit locals for emergency response
By Elizabeth Ridgeway, Special to the Town Crier
 joe hu /town crier CERT (Citizen Emergency Response Team) volunteer Mike Larkin displays his emergency kit which includes supplies such as water, a first-aid kit, pet supplies, batteries and an emergency radio. |
As the human cost of Hurricane Katrina plays out, communities are asking how they might fare in a similar emergency and what they should do to prepare themselves. The Bay Area is likely to have a major earthquake within the next 30 years, and like fire or man-made disasters, additional regional risks, it could come without warning.
Local civic and volunteer organizations have plans and supplies in place to respond to disasters, but the community’s most powerful resource is individual preparedness and self-sufficiency, experts said.
Local first responders agreed that the only factor that could have prevented unnecessary loss of life in the hurricane-affected areas would have been individual household preparedness.
“The first few days after something happens, you are going to be on your own,” said Mike Larkin, a Los Altos resident who assists with the police department’s emergency preparedness courses. “The National Guard and paramedics will be dealing with the rescue, fire and life threatening emergencies - there just won’t be resources for food and water.”
Residents’ self-sufficiency is integral to the disaster response plans prepared by local governments and the American Red Cross. The delay in aid to stranded flood victims in New Orleans was similar to that anticipated for most communities hit by a disaster of such magnitude, according to local experts. Emergency services cannot immediately respond to all the victims affected by a large disaster.
“In Los Altos at any given time there are roughly 30,000 people,” said Los Altos Police Officer Rod Sayre. “When a big quake hits, there will be about four firefighters, two paramedics and four police officers (on duty). How long will it take a person to get help, given that? We teach people how to get along by themselves for three to five days.” Sayre is a Crime Prevention Officer who teaches Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) preparedness courses.
How to prepare
“The best thing people can do is be personally prepared,” said Jeff Ziman of the Palo Alto Area Red Cross. “A big part of the Red Cross’ job is to do preparedness training. People are going to be isolated and cut off, and with the best will in the world we are not going to be able to get to them.”
Residents can access preparedness education in many venues. Sayre integrates neighborhood safety awareness into the talks he gives school and neighborhood groups as a crime prevention officer. The Red Cross and many Web sites provide information. The Los Altos police department regularly schedules CERT courses. Every January the department, the Red Cross and Los Altos United Methodist Church team up to host a disaster preparedness fair.
Any citizen can learn the essentials of disaster survival: a three-day supply of food and water, a meeting place and alternate site where family can assemble, and an out-of-state contact.
Taking care of yourself and your family can reach further. Everyone in a community benefits from having prepared neighbors, said Dave Lion, a CERT graduate and local ham radio operator.
“If you are on a daily friendly basis with most of your neighbors, you’ve got people to trust you and to support you when needed,” Larkin said. “In an emergency, as soon as we are confident in our own health and welfare, we should be able to donate service and support to our neighbors.”
After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, Lion volunteered his ham radio skills to assist a surveyor in determining waterline damage.
“As part of Red Cross preparations, we have identified buildings we think will make safe shelters and (have) stockpiled materials. We have plans, playbooks and checklists for what to do for different disasters. But if we had a large-scale incident, we wouldn’t be able to get help from the outside immediately - we would be working with local citizens who are CERT members and spontaneous volunteers,” Ziman said.
Neighbors an asset
“The elderly and disabled should get to know their neighbors and make sure they have their medicine and identifying information ready and available if their neighbors need to help out,” Los Altos Hills Public Safety Officer Steve Garcia said.
Having special needs in a disaster does not mean that you are helpless. The next CERT preparedness training, a nine-day course beginning Oct. 12, will address how to help frail neighbors. It is open to volunteers of all ages and abilities. The youngest participant was a 10-year-old, the oldest, 85.
“The 10-year-old was safely lifting objects as heavy as 500 pounds [in drills to rescue a trapped person],” Sayre said. “A lot of the elderly feel, ‘well, what can I do? I have a walker. What value can I be?’ In any incident, there needs to be a scribe who can take names of injured, rescuers and needed equipment. Someone who can’t help physically can still be a great resource.”
Spaces are available in the CERT class for anyone who works or lives in Los Altos or Los Altos Hills. The $90 for the course includes a CERT kit with helmet, jacket and supplies.
Community residents from the schools, businesses and clergy sit on the Citizens Core Council, a volunteer group that solicits funding from the Department of Homeland Security for local projects. Later this month, the police department will receive a mobile response trailer purchased with grant money.
“When it arrives, we are going to have to do some fund raising to fill it with emergency supplies,” said Police Chief Bob Lacey. In a disaster, the trailer would be hauled to a central location to dispense supplies.
Arks, a term for permanent disaster supply locations, are another community resource Lacey would like to see installed in Los Altos. “The biggest issue is space for the arks,” he said. “We could get the containers at little to no cost, (but) we would need to find a place to put them.”
Another source of disaster supplies is the Red Cross. “We know who we could call to get supplies quickly, local businesses for the most part,” said Rosemary Byrne, a member of the Palo Alto Area Chapter. The chapter has a standing agreement with the police and fire department for emergency response, and a Red Cross representative sits on the Citizens Core Council, Byrne said.
City and agencies respond
The city manager is ultimately in charge of the emergency operations centers, and representatives from the city departments - public works, finance, planning, radio organizations, and police and fire departments - will gather to assess damage and make plans. Depending on the degree of the disaster, cities can call for county or state help. The governor must declare a disaster area before local officials can request federal assistance.
When a Red Cross dispatcher learns of a disaster, a trained disaster action team is deployed. It can summon additional volunteers as needed. In a large disaster, the local Red Cross would summon regional or even national chapters, as was the case with Hurricane Katrina. Twenty-one local residents have been deployed to the hurricane area in recent weeks, and many more are being trained.
Residents should be prepared to walk to aid locations, but school and charter buses could be available to ferry people out of an impacted area. The Hillview Community Center in Los Altos is designated as a possible shelter and local churches, such as Los Altos United Methodist, would open their doors.
“We would be considered a first-stage disaster site, where people could gather to receive food, clothing and emergency medical assistance before they are evacuated to an actual sheltering site,” said Mark Bollwinkel, senior pastor at United Methodist.
The church school at United Methodist holds required training meetings for parents and teachers and keeps supplies on site. “We had great help from the police department in putting together disaster preparedness plans for both our children’s center and for the congregation as a whole,” said Bollwinkel, a CERT graduate.
Parents should familiarize themselves with the plans at their children’s schools. Los Altos High School, which has a CERT instructor on its staff, maintains a supply ark on campus and trained student-CERT teams.
“You don’t have to be able to dig people out of a collapsed building to make a contribution. You never really know what the disaster or emergency really is going to be, but I think the CERT students get a sense that they can have a lot more input into their destiny - they can be involved, adapt, they have the basics to work with,” Larkin said.
For online preparedness training and more information, visit training.fema.gov/emiweb/CERT/.
For more information about city preparedness programs, call Rod Sayre at 947-2776 for Los Altos or Steve Garcia at 947-2508 for Los Altos Hills.
