Neighborhoods May Play Role In Emergency Reponse

Imagine the worst: a firestorm sweeping across the landscape, charring every tree and home in its path.

Or a leak at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, an earthquake, floods or … an ice storm.

Who will check on your grandma to make sure she’s OK? Who will help your uncle if he starts having chest pains when all the emergency teams are busy?

Whom do you turn to if your son stops breathing?

The answer might be “your neighbor.”

A group of Spokane representatives, including Al French, chairman of the Nevada-Lidgerwood neighborhood council, and Molly Myers, director of the city’s Neighborhood Services office, recently attended a conference in Baltimore, sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to learn about community emergency response training.

The basic idea is to train neighborhood teams to provide emergency care during a disaster when emergency services are stretched beyond capacity.

“Fire stations used to be neighborhood based. They were an open and integral part of neighborhoods,” Myers said.

“This is a way of reopening those doors. But this wouldn’t take the place of emergency services.” It’s about being prepared.

The first step is to create an outline for the program. Neighborhoods will fill in individual details.

“The key is how it’s packaged, or else it will fall apart,” said Myers. “We want to make sure it fits us.”

At this point, no one knows just what it will look like or who will be involved. Universities, hospitals, businesses, schools and churches likely will be part of the program, said French.

No one knows yet how the emergency training will mesh with Community Oriented Policing and other neighborhood programs.

“First we will ask the neighborhoods if this is something they want, does it make sense, does it fit?” said Myers.

Actual training of emergency volunteers could start as early as summer.

Everyone is trained as a team leader, since there is no way of knowing who will be the first to arrive at an emergency scene.

Clearly, there are other cities where community emergency response teams seem more urgent, where typhoons, tornadoes, floods and earthquakes are a fact of life.

In Spokane, widespread disasters are rare.

But French said the potential is there.

“We are downwind from Hanford, live next door to an Air Force refueling station, (and) have major rail lines that carry a variety of chemicals through our city every day,” he said.

It’s a proactive response to a potential problem, said Myers.

Creating emergency response teams based on neighborhoods makes sense, she added.

“There isn’t a single neighborhood where this wouldn’t work. In a disaster, all of us are vulnerable,” she said.

Each program will be customdesigned for each neighborhood.

“Once the program is developed, there is so much more you can do with it,” said Myers.

“I think it’s very doable,” she said.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: WHERE TO CALL More information is available by calling Molly Myers at the Office of Neighborhood Services, 625-6269.