Emergency Preparedness for Canal Residents

Canal Community Resilience Council Update January 2021

In January, the CCRC learned more about emergency preparedness with an engaging presentation from Quinn Gardner, Emergency Manager with the City of San Rafael.

Quinn gave a detailed presentation on how to prepare. She noted that an emergency is different from a disaster.  An emergency is something like a house fire, where all the systems we have in place like fire fighters, the police, and the Red Cross, are all functioning and can come to our aid.  In a disaster, the emergency is widespread, and the system cannot scale up quick enough and long enough to respond. In a disaster, community members need one another to be able to respond while they systems work to develop a widespread response.

Quinn noted that are three big things we all need to do to prepare for an emergency: have and practice a plan, gather tools and supplies, and stay informed and engaged. Making lists and plans can help people stay on track and sharing those lists and plans with all household members is vital.

While we may think of a disaster as being just the major event—there is a “disaster cycle” going on well before and after that key event.  For instance, we need to mitigate the conditions that help lead to the disaster, like clearing brush to keep the fire risk down or wearing masks to avoid getting COVID. Following the disaster, there is also recovery—and recovery does not mean that things get “back to normal”, but that we find a new normal and build back better. One CCRC participant put this cycle in the context of climate change, noting how human activity can be the driver of natural disasters and also create the conditions that make them hard to fight and recover from. For instance, worsening droughts can create the conditions for wildland fires, and decrease the amount of water we have to fight them.

Quinn noted several alert systems residents can sign up for, including NIXLE and Alert Marin.

Local Government & Advocacy

The Marin Environmental Housing Collaborative presented a brief introduction to representative democracy and advocacy. This topic will be addressed in more detail in the coming months as the group meets elected officials and takes part in advocacy training. This topic is vital to the CCRC project because the goal of the CCRC is to empower community residents to take part in the processes of local government that impact the Canal community.