CDC 10-27-05
Cupertino Disaster Council/Citizen Corps Council
October 27, 2005
Meeting Minutes
1. CALL TO ORDER
At 2:10p.m., Councilmember Kris Wang called the meeting to order in the Vallco
Training Center, 10101 N. Wolfe Road, Cupertino.
2. ROLL CALL
City Staff: Rick Kitson, Nidhi Mathur, Mariyah Serratos, Steffanie Turini, David Woo
City Council: Kris Wang
Community Members: Larry Cowles, Carl Dunn, Ron Levine, Rich Madden, Jim
Wollbrinck, Victoria Yang
Santa Clara County Sheriff: John Hirokawa
Santa Clara County Fire: Marsha Hovey, Ken Waldvogel
3. COMMITTEE REPORTS
CERT - Report attached.
Neighborhood Watch - Steffanie Turini reported that many people expressed interest in
neighborhood watch during the Golden Jubilee celebration. There are now 148 leaders
with 201 neighborhoods and ecap has 1,314 members.
OES - Report attached.
MRC - Marsha Hovey reported that Carter Robinson had stepped down. She also
reported that an orientation would be done for doctors interested in working on MRC and
working during disasters.
4. NEW BUSINESS
A. Notification Plan
Rick Kitson led a brainstorming session to develop a targeted notification plan for
the city. Various methods of communication were discussed.
5. Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned at 3:36 p.m.
OFFICE OF EMERGENCY SERVICES
CUPEIQ1NO
10300 Torre Avenue
Cupertino, CA 95014-3255
Telephone: (408) 777-3335
Fax: (408) 777-3366
www.cupertino.org/emergency
OES Report to Disaster Council/Citizen Corps Council October 2005
OES
Since Hurricane Katrina, many people have called to ask how prepared we are. There were
two key issues with Katrina. 1) The general population was massively unprepared and 2)
The government had unrealistic expectations of FEMA. In our City, I believe the
government understands that FEMA is not a first responder - they are a mitigation
(preparedness) and recovery entity. A three to four day response time for them is realistic.
When the gulf states felt they were not receiving help in a timely manner, mayors were
calling governors, cities were calling presidents, etc. We don't do it that way here. All
requests from our jurisdiction must go through our EOC to the Operational Area EOC. That
ensures we don't make duplicate requests.
I do believe that we still have a largely unprepared citizen base - fewer than 600 people
have taken CERT - which will make any disaster response much more difficult for local
government. After every disaster, a handful of citizens get interested enough to call OES
and ask what they should do - and we give them the answers. This interest typically fades
about 30 days after the most recent disaster. I encourage every member of the Disaster
Council to educate the community about our preparedness activities and do everything in
your power to support emergency preparedness efforts - for the good of everyone!
o We have to move the Training Center again on Oct 31. It will be directly across the
hall from the current location, in the old KB Toys space. It's a larger space and will
allow us to teach larger classes.
o National Incident Management System (NIMS) - Emergency Plan has been updated
to reflect NIMS changes and was adopted by Council on Sept. 20. Council also
passed a resolution adopting NIMS as our method for managing emergencies. We
began training to the new plan on Oct. 24 and will conduct another class Nov. 14.
Training can also be done online at www.fema.Qov/nims
o Community Rating System (CRS) - Application approved by FEMA with a score of
"8". Will save Cupertino residents over 1 million dollars in flood insurance premiums
each year.
o DMA 2000 plan final version was approved by FEMA in September.
o Personal Emergency Preparedness Workshop has become more popular. The last
class had 25 participants.
o Kaleidoscope starts August 1. CERT starts September 6.
o EOC Exercise date Tuesday, November 15 from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. We will
be part of a four county terrorism exercise called "Golden Guardian". Our
participation will be to react to a real time, full scale event, occurring in a nearby
County.
o ARKs - Painted by Trevor Gabriel and Troop 476.
o Avian Flu - Public Health is working hard to figure out how to manage a pandemic.
Right now, the only solution is for people to stay home if they have a fever and flu
symptoms to help slow the spread. Once the flu has spread to humans, it will take
six months to develop a vaccine. The City will begin planning soon on how to
administer vaccine to 30,000 people a day for three days.
o Working with Cupertino School District and San Jose Water on emergency plans
and training.
o OES Volunteer(s) of the year - Alan Gontang and Greg Rimanich
CERT
o We sent one of our graduates to assist with Hurricane Katrina (Lynne Carlton).
She worked in a shelter.
o Monthly refresher classes are well attended. In an effort to increase interaction
between the volunteer groups, we also did two combined presentations with
CERT and CARES - one to watch the movie "Dirty War" and the second to listen
to a representative from our Public Health Department talk about the medical
response to Hurricane Katrina.
o The first Planning and Intelligence Section Documentation training was
conducted in October. Eleven volunteers attended (these are people who have
not taken CERT). They learned how to support CERT at the ARKs by
processing requests for help and maintaining the event maps.
o Our September CERT class graduated 8 people bringing our numbers to 680.
o CERT exercise on November 12 involving simulated evacuation of the Sevens
Springs neighborhood.
MRC
o Several doctors have signed up to join the group since Hurricane Katrina. We're
still looking for more.
o MRC members staffed first aid booths for Tournament of Bands, Diwali Festival,
Golden Jubilee and St. Joseph Carnival.
o Advanced First Aid class (52 hour training) is being completed this month by 8
CERT grads.