Neighborhood Emergency Teams

Watching Hurricane Katrina & the disorganized response to it made me want to help prepare myself & my community for a major emergency, which in our community is likely to be an earthquake. So when I heard about our local Fire Bureau's program of "Neighborhood Emergency Team" (or NET), I called to find out more. NETs assist the Portland Fire Dept. in neighborhoods (so for instance I would be working in my neighborhood along with other NET members, usually we aren't called out to other neighborhoods but that might change depending on the magnatude of the event) during major emergency. To become a member you must take the training & occassional refreshers (our NET has been mobilized 5 times in 10 years).

PFB has trainings each season. It's a 7-week course of 3-hour sessions with emphasis on hands-on training, followed by a 4-hour practical exercise. I'm taking the winter training right now & learning about things like earthquake awareness, hazard mitigation, utility control, fire suppression, hazardous materials, disaster medicine, light search & rescue, team response & management.

I'm really glad I'm taking this, it makes me feel less afraid. I know how to do things like turn off my utilities if I need to, understand how fires work, etc.

I highly recommend taking it. Various cities have different names for community involvement but they are generally run by the local fire bureau.