It wasn’t long ago I wrote about the stellar accomplishments of our City in the area of emergency preparedness. One of the items I proudly mentioned was the development of CERT, Community Emergency Response Teams, comprised of dedicated community members who have been extensively trained by our Fire Department in the area of emergency preparedness.
The training curriculum covers a myriad of subjects aimed at preparing our volunteers to work side by side with the City’s emergency responders when emergencies occur. Those who complete the course curriculum become CERT graduates and are members of our City’s official emergency response team.
The Fire Department graduated the first class last month and many more classes are scheduled in the future. Our former Mayor Russ Harter graduated in the first class and our current Vice-Mayor Pam Frisella is enrolled in the current class.
The CERT team was put to its first test on January 25th in an emergency drill entitled “Silver Dragon”. The exercise ominous as it may sound was a combined effort of the Foster City Fire and Police Departments and the San Mateo County Health Department.
The drill tested our town’s capacity to address an overwhelming emergency. In this case the scenario was to examine our ability to deliver vast quantities of medicine and medical supplies from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the Strategic National Stockpile during a pandemic influenza emergency.
Since the drill took place over the course of six hours, it was scaled back from involving the entire city and addressed everyone who lived in Neighborhood 2. None the less it still involved 1,015 households and instead of real medicine our responders distributed flu prevention brochures.
The San Mateo County Health Department served as auditor and examined the length of time it took our volunteers to distribute medicine as well as our “staging” capability and communications network. Our emergency services were further scrutinized in two key areas.
The first was how quickly we contacted the Strategic National Stockpile and our ability to warehouse medical supplies. The second was how capable our emergency workers operated hand held radios, cell phones and HAM radios. The exercise was a resounding success.
Our CERT volunteers were deployed at 8:55 AM and were expected to complete their task of reaching the 1,015 households by 12:00 noon. They didn’t do so. They reached the 1,015 households by 11:15 AM some forty five minutes sooner than expected.
This exercise is something incredibly new in the area of emergency preparedness and truly taxes our emergency response capability. It reveals what we do well and what we may need to improve upon. In sum, it enables us to be prepared for the fateful days we hope will never come.
Our City staff, particularly the Fire Department are to be commended for their vision and resourceful thinking in organizing our community and planning for these unfortunate events. Imagine the alternative outcome had the New Orleans Fire Department been able to rely upon CERT volunteers when hurricane Katrina struck.
I would personally like to extend my congratulations and thanks to the CERT volunteers, our City Manager Jim Hardy, Fire Chief Tom Reaves and Fire Marshal Lee Bach for all the hard work that went into the training and preparation for this exercise. I for one will sleep a lot sounder knowing our City’s emergency services are up to the task should an emergency strike.
I would also like to thank our Police Citizen Volunteers and Police Reserve Officers who live in our community and also make up part of the emergency preparedness matrix we will rely upon.
If you would like to step up to the plate and join your fellow citizens in making Foster City a safer place to live. 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 CERT and give you a list of future class dates.
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. I hope to see you there. If you have any questions or remarks you wish heard before then please feel free to call me at 650-349-2316 or e-mail me at jkiramis@fostercity.org.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve you.
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