Why Is This Important?
Natural or human-caused disasters can have devastating effects on a community, the economy, and the environment.  Having communitywide or individual plans that provide food, clean water, emergency medical services, temporary shelter, transportation, and other items can lessen the impacts from disasters on residents.  Plans to enable areas to quickly restore vital services are also essential so that the effects from a disaster are not compounded by a lack of power, water, sewer, and/or other services.  Residents or businesses may move elsewhere if they perceive the time taken to mitigate the effects of a disaster is too long, the damage to resources too great, or recovery aid unevenly distributed.

What Is a Sustainable State?
A sustainable state is one where a community is prepared to meet the emergency needs of all of its members in the event of a disaster.

How Are We Doing?
Local Government Preparedness
Guidelines under California’s Standardized Emergency Management System (SEMS) and the Federal National Incident Management System (NIMS) are designed to help local governments develop emergency operations plans (EOPs) for disasters.  Having an EOP compliant with SEMS and NIMS ensures that during a major disaster, responders can work in a coordinated manner with personnel from other local jurisdictions and the state and federal governments.

  • San Mateo County and all of the cities within the county have EOPs compliant with SEMS.
  • As of January 2008, over 70 percent of cities in the county had EOPs that were compliant with NIMS.  Of the others, nearly all were in the process of updating their plans to meet NIMS guidelines. 

    • In addition, each year city and county emergency personnel and other staff undergo multiple trainings on disaster response procedures.

Community Preparedness
Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training teaches individuals skills such as fire safety, light search and rescue, and first aid; such skills can help local communities during an emergency.  Ham radio operator training can provide a community with emergency communication capabilities.  A volunteer Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) can help meet the public health needs of a community in an emergency.  As of the end of 2007:

  • Residents in 85 percent of cities in the county had CERT training available through their local government or fire district.  The county
    also provided CERT training.
  • Eighty percent of all cities in the county had a trained group of ham radio operators.
  • Only the Town of Woodside had an established MRC (although others had identified volunteer medical workers in their communities).

Individual Preparedness
In a 2007 poll, the American Red Cross found that, only 7 percent of Americans had taken three essential steps necessary to prepare for a disaster:
(1) assembled a disaster kit with emergency supplies, (2) made a plan on how to reach family members if they are separated, and (3) were informed about the types of disasters most likely to occur in their community.
 

See appendix page 73, CLICK HERE. Researcher: Joe Rois