Why is This Important?
Natural or human-caused disasters can have devastating effects on a community, the economy, and the environment. Having a plan for your community or your household that provides food, clean water, emergency medical services, temporary shelter, and transportation during emergencies can lessen the impacts of disasters. Government agencies must have plans that enable areas to quickly restore vital services so that the effects from a disaster are not compounded by a lack of power, water, sewer, and/or other services.
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 its cities have EOPs compliant with SEMS.
· San Mateo County and local governments conducted three major preparedness exercises in 2010. On April 21, the county conducted an Emergency Operations Center (EOC) Functional Exercise which tested communication capabilities between the County EOC and city EOCs. On April 28 the county participated in the Bay Area-wide Golden Guardian Exercise with a simulated terrorist incident at the Port of Redwood City. Finally, the county continued its participation in the annual “Great Shakeout” preparedness exercise in October, the largest earthquake preparedness drill in the country.
Community Preparedness
Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training teaches individuals fire safety or light search and rescue, skills that can help local communities during an emergency.
· As of 2010, there were 16 active CERT teams in the county, covering almost all areas of the county.
· In 2010, the county reported that 1,757 local residents had completed CERT trainings.
· The San Mateo County Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) had 56 members.
· San Mateo County also maintains an emergency alert system that residents can sign up for at http://www.smcalert.info. The system sends information to residents on their cell phones (by text message) or email about emergencies that impact them. As of March 2011, there were 15,646 registered accounts in the SMC Alert system. Registrations spiked by 10 percent in the days following the Japan tsunami.
· The half-hour emergency preparedness DVD “Get Ready San Mateo County” is now accessible on the http://www.smcready.org home page. It is also available in Spanish, Chinese, and Tagalog subtitles and Closed-Captioned for the deaf and hard of hearing.
San Bruno Incident
On the evening of Thursday September 9, 2010 a massive explosion fueled by a ruptured high-pressure natural gas pipeline tore through the Crestmoor neighborhood in San Bruno, California. The resulting “six-alarm” fire involved the emergency response personnel and equipment of every city and town in the county, as well as many other counties in the Bay Area. In total, over 500 police officers, fire fighters and emergency medical personnel responded, including air tankers and helicopters from CalFire. Over 400 homes were evacuated, and both the city of San Bruno and the county quickly activated their EOCs, which remained in place for a number of weeks. While there have been no formal evaluations of the totality of the response, consensus was that the processes and plans in place were successful in managing the incident.
