Publication Date: Wednesday, July 07, 2004
Editorial: Emergency-readiness program needs teeth
Editorial: Emergency-readiness program needs teeth
(July 07, 2004) 'PANDA' neighborhood-preparedness system shows signs of benign neglect, which could become serious negligence in a real crisis
It is distressing to note that the 5-year-old Palo Alto Neighborhood Disaster Activities (PANDA) program already seems to be showing signs of decay and neglect. "I think the training has become stale," Councilwoman Judy Kleinberg said at a June 21 City Council study session on the city's coordination efforts involving police and fire departments and citizens. Kleinberg is a PANDA and also serves as vice-chair of the Santa Clara County Emergency Preparedness Council.
The seven-week, federally designed PANDA training is meant to prepare residents to fill in on a neighbor-helping-neighbor level during major crises, when emergency personnel may become overwhelmed. A rule-of-thumb is that in a truly massive crisis -- a major earthquake, terror attack, natural disaster -- residents may have to wait up to two or three days to get assistance for anything but life-threatening conditions.
Other cracks in the system became evident as trained volunteers said they were not aware of ongoing meetings, felt isolated from other volunteers and haven't even been able to find out who other volunteers are.
As detailed in Jocelyn Dong's article in this week's Upfront news section, the city's emergency preparedness efforts, while well intentioned and making some progress, appear to be falling woefully short of the slogan: "Preparing for Tomorrow's Disasters ... Today." They don't even measure up to the famous Boy Scout motto, "Be prepared!"
They fell so far short, in fact, that one wonders if the city might be courting some liability exposure -- as in the 1998 flood, after which some residents sued the city over inadequate notification and response.
The need for a more effective emergency-alert system was dramatically underscored May 17 in the nationally famous case of the mountain lion that wandered for hours around Palo Alto residential neighborhoods while uninformed residents walked their dogs, let toddlers play in backyards and had elementary-school-aged children walk to school.
A month ago, we cited an urgent need for a better emergency-alert system (Weekly, June 2 -- "Lion or not, we need better 'alerts'") that goes far beyond the existing, slow telephone dial-up system the city installed after the 1998 flood.
But even with instant dial-ups, there are far too many residents who wouldn't get the word because they are at work or otherwise away from home. And if there's a power outage, many -- perhaps most -- home telephones won't work.
And a shocking shortcoming is that the system is not able to dial cell phones. In a cell-phone world, this gap is frightening. As some noted after the lion incident, even the old Civil Defense sirens dating from the 1950s and 1960s -- now decommissioned -- would do a better job of letting folks know something important was going on.
On the positive side, the city is to be commended for the steps it has taken. It has formed an Emergency Preparedness Steering Committee as part of a restructured Office of Emergency Services last year. The committee is guided by a larger Emergency Preparedness Working Group. Beyond the multi-departmental city groups, there is a Community Disaster Preparedness Group, comprised of representatives of city, school, business, county, Stanford, Red Cross, neighborhood, communications and other organizations. Even the Stanford Shopping Center and Avenidas senior center are represented.
Coordination is great. But the restructuring eliminated the single position of emergency services coordinator, and we think that may have dispersed responsibility and accountability too broadly for a focused, intensive response in crisis situations.
Kleinberg sounded a strong warning that the community should heed:
"This council really needs to step up soon to the fact that we have not got enough money being put into this effort. If we sit back and we wait for federal funds, we're not going to be ready. We won't have the personnel, we won't have the training, we won't have the equipment.
"We will be facing a disaster."
We may, in fact, already be in the midst of something akin to a bureaucratic disaster, and city officials should move quickly to remedy that. This should be a city top priority. It should be agendized for definitive action by early fall and targeted for definitive improvements by the end of the year.
Otherwise it will cease to be benign neglect and begin to move toward serious negligence.
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