I hope many of you had an opportunity to attend this year’s Arts and Wine Festival. Our City once again came together in grand style and clearly demonstrated our ability at being a very gracious host to both visitors and fellow members of our community. I too enjoyed the many booths, the theatrical presentations and everything else we presented to our guests.
I will have to admit however my favorite booth was the one hosted by the City of Foster City. After all, emergency preparedness is something near and dear to me. I had a chance to speak with Fire Chief Tom Reaves and Assistant Fire Marshal Lee Bach about the great things they are up to. Assistant Fire Marshal Bach pointed out to me how they had collected over 5 pages of signatures at the festival from our fellow community members wishing to become involved in NERT, which is an acronym for Neighborhood Emergency Response Teams.
I was very pleased, but not surprised, to see how so many of our fellow neighbors came forward to learn to be more prepared to work together in an emergency. I was not surprised because I know, given the opportunity, all of us have a very strong sense of community and take pride in working hard together to make Foster City a special place like no other.
For those of you who have not yet heard of NERT it is really quite simple except for the fact it is a very arduous undertaking by our Fire Department. The way it works is citizens are encouraged to take classes provided by the Fire Department to enhance their skill level in emergency preparedness.
Neighbors are shown how to organize themselves and plan together for managing the first 3 to 5 days of a disaster. The Fire Department will then maintain this list of trained individuals and neighborhood teams, which can be utilized to mobilize our citizens as support to City Staff in the event of an emergency or natural disaster.
We all wish to help our neighbors and our community in the event of a catastrophe. Now we have an organized system which provides us with the ability and means to do so. The credit goes to Fire Chief Tom Reaves and Assistant Fire Marshal Lee Bach who developed the program with City Manager Jim Hardy in full support. Imagine if you will, being able to identify trained volunteers who are nurses, physicians, engineers, heavy equipment operators not to mention firefighters and police officers from other cities who happen to be our neighbors.
Imagine being able to rely on the help of our neighbors who are organized and willing to help in a broad multitude of ways. Using this protocol will enable us to systematically look out for ourselves and work together at saving lives, bringing comfort and aid to our injured, caring for our children and bringing our City back to full operating capacity.
There is no guarantee a natural disaster will occur during regular hours when all of our city staff is on-duty. Nature may move against us when we least expect it. We may only be able to rely upon those city employees who are here at the time of what may come. We may have inaccessible roads leading in and out of our town. Our only resource will be each other and the foresight that we have trained and prepared ourselves to rise as a banded community of friends and neighbors.
I applaud our Fire Department for taking this bold step forward aimed at increasing our chances of surviving a natural disaster. I also thank our Police Citizen Volunteers and Police Reserve Officers who live in our community and make up part of the emergency preparedness matrix we will rely upon.
This program will in time become renowned and heralded by other cities and it will become a working model which other cities will copy for use in their emergency preparedness. I call upon you and urge you to call or email Assistant Fire Marshal Lee Bach at lbach@fostercity.org or 650-286-3357. She will be more than happy to provide you with information about NERT and give you a list of future class dates for our Basic Emergency Preparedness training and Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) classes. You can also visit the Fire Departments website at www.fostercity.org/services/safety/fire/ to learn more about emergency preparedness.
I hope to see you at my Sunday meetings between 3:00 P.M. to 5:00 P.M at the Council Chambers. You can stop by and ask question or voice concerns or discuss any matter you have on your mind.
If you have any questions or remarks you wish heard before then please feel free to call me at 650-286-3504 or e-mail me at jkiramis@fostercity.org.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve you.
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