By MARTIN SNAPP
Contra Costa Times
How prepared is Berkeley to handle a major disaster? Officials say they’re doing everything they can, given the resources. But that’s the catch, say members of the Disaster Council, who claim the resources are inadequate because of budget cuts over the last few years.
The city’s response plan is based on the assumption that, like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Berkeley will be on its own for up to five days. “We can’t count on help reaching us from the outside, said Gil Dong, Director of the Office of Emergency Services. “If there’s a major earthquake, the bridges could be down or the Caldecott Tunnel could be closed. We’d have to rely for basic supplies on helicopter drops or ferry boats at the Marina.”
At the same time, individual residents are being warned not to expect assistance from the city for their everyday needs, such as food and water.
“The police and fire departments will be busy rescuing people and putting out fires,” Dong said. “Our top priorities have to be saving lives, saving property, and protecting the environment. Only then can we get into restoring government services.”
So OES has adopted a decentralized approach, relying on the city’s volunteer neighborhood associations to assume primary responsibility for their own neighborhoods. It is also urging individual residents to prepare a week’s worth of food, water, and other necessities for their families.
Working with the neighborhood associations, the Fire Department has secreted caches of emergency supplies in each City Council district: One-third of each cache contains survival and first aid supplies, including food, water, blankets, bandages, and medications. Another third contains search and rescue equipment, such as crowbars and axes. The final third is reserved for the Fire Department’s own emergency equipment, providing firefighters a backup if they’re cut off from their primary equipment.
“For security reasons, we don’t publicize their locations,” said Dong, “but the local neighborhood associations know where they are.”
It looks good on paper, but Karl Reeh and Jesse Townley, chairman and vice chairman of the city’s volunteer Disaster Council, worry about implementation. They give Dong high marks for ability and effort, but say cuts to his budget have crippled OES’s ability to coordinate the response.
“Three years ago, OES had four full-time staffers,” said Reeh. “Now it’s down to two people -- Gil and his Community Emergency Response Training manager, Dory Ehrlich. And Gil isn’t even full-time because he’s also the city’s Fire Marshal and an Assistant Fire Chief. You’ve got one man trying to do three jobs.”
Townley said his neighbors asked him to get someone from OES to come out and talk to them, so he called Ehrlich.
“She said, ‘Get in line; I’m inundated with requests right now’ -- which is great and awful at the same time. It’s great because people want to learn how to take care of themselves, but it’s awful because the city can’t handle that demand in a timely manner. Gil and Dory are good at what they do, but they’re incredibly overworked.”
Dong admitted the staffing shortage and said it might get even worse in the near future. “We don’t have enough on-duty firefighters to send out to the neighborhoods because of the staff reductions over the last few years. We’re down one company right now, and when the fire season ends in a few weeks we’ll be down two.”
Since he doesn’t have the manpower to go to the neighborhoods, Dong is asking residents to come to him -- namely, by attending one of the community disaster preparedness workshops the Fire Department is offering this fall and winter.
The first will be held Oct. 22 at the South Berkeley Community Center, followed on Nov. 5 at the West Berkeley Senior Center and Dec. 3 at the PG&E building at the corner of Center and Martin Luther King.
The free, two-hour classes will teach residents how to protect themselves and their homes, how to network with their neighbors, and how to get further training in specialized skills such as first aid.
“After people take these classes, we’re going to put on a train-the-trainer class in January to teach interested citizens how to reach out to their own communities,” said Dong. “We need to get outreach to neighborhoods we normally don’t have access to.” Reeh and Townley praised these efforts but said that without more funding, a golden opportunity is going to be wasted.
“Usually, it’s really hard to convince people to prepare for something they hope they’ll never see,” said Townley. “Now, because of Katrina, they’re paying attention. But it won’t last forever. It would be a shame to squander this chance. In the end, you get you pay for.”