Lakewood's Disaster Preparedness - Acting Locally

[Ellen Malonis]

The madness on the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina got me thinking of the old saying: "Don't get mad - go M.A.D." (make a difference)

As a community, how is the city of Lakewood, and all of it's various departments and agencies preparing for an eventual disaster? I'm not thinking only of a terrorist or tornado, but an event such as an overturned railroad tanker, leaking toxic chemicals. Lord knows we've seen so many horrific happenings in the past few years that we should not be complacent about something happening here. It might be helpful to get a discussion going: Can Lakewood residents have confidence that our local officials are well prepared? What should we, as residents do to take personal responsibility for disaster preparedness?

If our family was told we had to evacuate our home immediately - would we be ready? Wouldn't it be wise to have some essential emergency items packed, with a list of others to include at the last minute (such as medicines) when you might not be thinking clearly. One story I heard out of New Orleans, was of doctors finally getting to the shelters to help the ailing, and not having any paper or pens/pencils to write on. (Those are items I would never have thought to bring)

Any comments or ideas?

[Thomas J. George]

Ellen,

Rest assured, City officials are undergoing systematic training to address our City response to a disaster in our area. Fire Chief Larry Mroz approached me shortly after my taking office in January 2004 with an aggressive agenda to prepare our community for an emergency such as you describe.

First, we appointed retired Lakewood Police officer Kevin Galvin as our CERT coordinator. Under Kevin's leadership Lakewood is the only western Cuyahoga County suburb that has a CERT (Community Emergency Response Team). Kevin has organized two training classes to train citizens volunteers on how to respond to an emergency. He has also brought in instructors from Texas A & M University for a three day seminar at City Hall to teach our safety forces the latest disaster response techniques.

In collaboration with our City Office on Aging and Health Department, last fall we held a mass inoculation drill at Lakewood High School to simulate a smallpox epidemic. We received high marks from all involved for this drill.

Just last Thursday, all key City personnel, including myself, were trained for three hours at the Main Fire Station on Madison by Coast Guard personnel on emergency command structure and organization.

I will be meeting with other western Cuyahoga County mayors in early September, most of whom have no CERT program in their communities, to update them on our CERT efforts in Lakewood.
Our intention is to join with them in the formation of a regional CERT program.

In the meantime, our safety forces are in constant training to assure an orderly and timely response to a community wide disaster.

TJG

[Stan Austin]

Ellen---

I was in the first class of CERT volunteers that the Mayor talked about in his post. This is Community Emergency Response Team and its origins are primarily in California which has had to respond to many natural disasters.

Our purpose is to supplement the first responders in the event of an overwhelming incident. The Mayor or Fire Chief or Police Chief would issue the order to call us out.

We would then be notified by a phone tree. Each of us has an updated list of our class members and contact numbers. We would then go to a rallyng point. At the rallying point we would be told of what the incident was and what we had to do.

For instance if it was an overturned rail car each of us might be assigned a nearby block to do an immediate inspection to determine if there are any injuries. Out training included evaluation of injuries for triage purposes. The reason for this particular action is that the incident would immediately tax the resources of the first responders.

We would act under the direction of a police/fire commander to help out to the limits of our training.

Something that is a real possibility which we have seen this past week is the necessity to house people in one central location. One area where CERT volunteers would come in would be to staff emergency shelters such as a school in order to provide an official presence---something that was totally lacking in New Orleans.

In another post DL Meckes describes an emergency drill that some of us participated in this past June. This was a simulated bomb explosion at Madison Elementary School. Read it for a summary.

This is a unique instance where a politician quickly fulfilled a campaign promise. Tom's overriding theme in his campaign for mayor was public safety. He then took immediate advantage of the training to establish CERT. Kevin Galvin is uniquely qualified for this position having been a police officer. (Despite that. the Fire Department has accepted him into their ranks!)

I personally feel that I could help out under proper direction with my training. We will never know until the time has come but I feel a little better in my skills to help out.

Additionally, more CERT classes are being formed so take part in one. And already we are going to receive updated training by becoming certified in CPR.

Stan Austin

[dl meckes]

Stan-

One post to which you refer is actually an unpublished story which may or may not be in the next Observer.

There is a post about CERT in the Volunteers area of the Observation Deck http://lakewoodobserver.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=387.

I understand another class may be forming soon.

[Ellen Malonis]

Thank you, Mayor George, Stan and dl - It is indeed reassuring to learn about Lakewood's CERT program. An article in the LO would be timely considering the disaster in gulf coast communities. I may consider the training, but would need more information about the time commitment for the classes.

Keep us all posted - you may have many more enrollees this time!

[Ellen Malonis]

The Red Cross site has a wealth of information for families on disaster preparedness.

There is a whole page devoted to building an evacuation "kit", should you need to leave your home in an emergency:

http://www.redcross.org/prepare/buildakit.html

[Rhonda loje]

Ellen,

When you find out about the next training session please let me know. I would like to take that class too. I also think it would be a great story for the LO to cover.

I will be happy to take the photos if anyone steps up to write the article!

Thanks,

Rhonda Loje

[Suzanne Metelko]

Ellen et al. - my concern is not so much for my own family or even yours. What I'm seeing in the south is that there was an entire population of individuals who had no safety net, no coping skills and no possible way of helping themselves. If Lakewood has to have an emergency evacuation, what plans are in place to move those least likely to be able to move themselves? What we've witnessed in NO is a city that ordered a mandatory evacuation without providing for people who don't have cars, or credit cards or the means to get themselves out the door of their house. What about the homeless? Social workers will tell you that poor people will not move without taking everything they own. It may mean moving a suitcase or a pillowcase but for them it's their life savings. We need to prepare for that. Most of our safety forces live outside of the city. What happens if they can't get back to Lakewood to do their job? I'm thrilled that Lakewood is thinking about this. And Ellen, I think you're right, the next CERT class would be something for many of us to consider.

[dl meckes]

Ellen,

When you find out about the next training session please let me know. I would like to take that class too. I also think it would be a great story for the LO to cover.

I will be happy to take the photos if anyone steps up to write the article!

Thanks,

Rhonda Loje

Applications for the next class are available (I gave the link for the contact information).

DH & I have both applied for the training and if we can participate, we'll ask Kevin Galvin if there may be some photo ops. I'm hoping to write about the classes.

The better we know how to handle crisis situations, the better prepared we'll be.

[Mark Crnolatas]

This is a field I have been heavily involved in, since '69. It's good we have a mayor that has awareness and concern about disaster management. Many cities do not.

During the blackouts, Mayor George brought up the elderly, and the vast amount of apartments,and multi level homes in our city. Picture trying to get all of those people out of upper floors of the buildings, and transport them. If you simply drive down Detroit during rush hour , noting the normal traffic, picture the traffic problems trying to move out all the people in our city, to a safe location. What about gas for the cars that didn't have much in the tank, when the crisis occurred, or as mentioned above, those that do not have cars, money etc., at all.

We have an excellent police department and fire department but the size and scope of a whole city crisis is something else to consider. How fast can our city get outside assistance, on the scope of N.O.? Hours? Days?

As most any police officers or firefighters will tell you, most Americans are reactionary. The U.S. consciousness has not evolved to that of, for example Israel, where the citizenship expects sudden crisis. We, as a country, tend do things after we've been hit by a baseball bat, so to speak. Then we do a lot of armchair quarterbacking, studies, hearings, finger-pointing, but do we all really change on an individual level?

Example, the Twin Towers. They were built with the weight of each floor on the floor below, basically each floor held up by the walls of the building, rather than by a core structure, such as used in many buildings in Japan, which would have withstood the crashing of the aircraft into them.
We can ask the same questions of NYC as we ask of N.O. Why was that type of construction allowed on the tallest buildings in the world? Who allowed it? Who is at fault for not expecting the worst? They do elsewhere in the world.

To make a shameless plug, I had a business for 15 years that dealt with many levels of security and investigations, from local to international clients , and have recently started a new company to consult in threat, crisis,and disaster management/ preparedness, regarding the types of crisis we are seeing in the last few years.

It's a new era. Societies, let alone natural disasters, are the baseball bats I mentioned. We should try to learn, and increase awareness in crisis management, our realistic awareness, and preparedness.