At last night’s Map Your Neighborhood celebration held at Fire Station 23, about 30 people gathered to eat dessert, learn more about the Map Your Neighborhood program, and share what their neighborhoods are already doing. Some of those neighborhoods are doing quite a bit. Three in particular—Olympus Beach Road, Commodore, and Springwood—are well on their way to disaster readiness.
The goal of the Map Your Neighborhood program is to help neighborhoods get ready to take care of themselves for days or even weeks during a major emergency when infrastructure is severely challenged or even destroyed. One of the key elements of the program is neighbors getting to know one another. To accomplish this, many neighborhoods create a database, listing each home, its occupants and ages, and any special needs. The database enables neighbors to check up on each other after a major disaster, such as an earthquake, and to report to Island and County emergency personnel should anyone need immediate medical care. The database also identifies any special skills, such as nursing or Community Emergency Response Training, and equipment and tools, such as chainsaws and generators.
The Olympus Beach Road neighborhood organization includes 47 homes. Sylvia Nelson, the neighborhood’s organizer, said that many neighbors up the bluff from them are also asking to join their group. The Commodore community includes 65 homes. They are still completing their database but are well underway. The Springwood Neighborhood is far enough along in the process to have identified an assembly house for children, a place to care for injured, special needs within the community, and special skills. The Chatham Cove condo complex with 36 units is in the early stages of organization. The Mobile Home Park has obtained five rain barrels for the community to serve as emergency water sources and has secured them to buildings so that in an earthquake they are not knocked over.
All of these neighborhoods got their starts during the tenure of Ed Call, who was hired by the City to launch an emergency preparedness plan. Now that the Fire Department has taken over this responsibility under the leadership of Assistant Fire Chief Luke Carpenter, it is working closely with Sustainable Bainbridge’s Prepared Neighborhoods organization and the Kitsap County Department of Emergency Management (KCDEM) to jump start preparation once more.
Emergency supplies
Jenny Brewster, a native New Zealander with more earthquake experience than any of us wants, is working with her pastor husband to ready Island Church to serve as a center for medical care during a major crisis. Last night she laid out her extensive collection of emergency supplies on a few tables as an example of what people need to have on hand. She told those gathered that, unlike Chatham Cove or Commodore, for example, many communities on Bainbridge are less “cul-de-sac-y” and less defined. However, she said, it is still possible to identify neighborhoods within the trees. She said in her wooded neighborhood, which has its share of unfriendly dogs and hard-to-find homes, she mapped out a fifteen-minute walk route to identify a reasonable number of homes to organize as a community.
Prepared Neighborhoods’ Marit Saltrones kept track of participants’ recommendations on a white board. One of the things she wrote down was “privacy issues.” That’s because some of the participants said that a few of their neighbors didn’t want their information included in a database. One man spoke up and said that in an emergency those people concerned about privacy will nonetheless come running to their organized neighbors for help.
Susan May
Susan May, the Public Information Officer for KCDEM, said that her organization’s goals are for people (a) to prepare themselves and their own families,(b) to prepare their neighborhoods, and (c) to prepare their schools and businesses. She said she wants neighborhood organizations to provide her with the contact information for one neighborhood leader to serve as a contact person in an emergency. If communication is possible, May wants to know from each neighborhood what its status is and if there is need for emergency help or if they can manage for a while on their own. That way, at KCDEM headquarters she can track how to allocate the county’s resources according to greatest need.
Prepared Neighborhoods’ Sandra Davis said that they will post on their website (http://www.sustainablebainbridge.org/prepared-neighborhoods.aspx) blank database forms and spreadsheets used by the neighborhoods that are most organized so that other neighborhoods can use them as models. And a kit of organizational tools and instructions is available online from Map Your Neighborhood (http://www.emd.wa.gov/myn/index.shtml).
May also recommended that people who have the time and interest take the CERT (Community Emergency Response Training) course, offered by KCDEM. She said that ideally each neighborhood would have at least one person with CERT. To register, visit the KCDEM website (http://www.kitsapdem.org/classes.aspx). Class size is limited. Some classes are currently being offered on the island.
Some participants wondered how to spark interested among apathetic neighbors who can’t get motivated until a real emergency happens. Some of the suggestions offered were block parties, community newsletters, anything involving food, and sharing of support and information among neighborhoods. And one participant said tha,t when their neighborhood was being burglarized, it brought everyone together with renewed interest in organizing. On her whiteboard, Saltrones wrote down, “Take advantage of scary incidents.”
At the end of the evening, a participant raised her hand and asked how to differentiate a major from a minor emergency, such as a power outage. May said that the definition she and her colleagues use is “when you are overwhelmed.” That, she said, “is the definition of a disaster.”
Read more here:
Emergency Preparedness on the Island
Photos by Sarah Lane.
