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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 10, 2016)
Food Goes Further QR code for Portland Observer Online ‘City of Roses’ Volume XLV Number 32 Olympic Loss Eat healthier for cheaper with your SNAP benefits The Williams sisters are disappointed by their loss See page 5 See Sports, page 8 www.portlandobserver.com Wednesday • August 10, 2016 Established in 1970 Committed to Cultural Diversity Argay/Parkrose NET Team Leader Michael Schilmoeller emphasizes the day’s game plan with other NET volunteers and leaders during a team exercise. NETs routinely hold mock disaster exercises to ensure team members are fully prepared when an actual disaster strikes. Empowered for Disasters Residential response teams form to protect us from the big one by C ervante P oPe t he P ortland o bserver Portland’s Neighborhood Emergency Team (NET) program could save your life in the event of a natural disaster. Modeled after community emergency response teams in Los Angeles and San Francisco, the teams are made up of community residents who are trained to help their neighbors when a major earthquake or other national disaster occurs. “We know that pretty consis- tently around the world, in any natural disaster be it an earth- quake, tsunami or whatever, 92 to 95 percent of all the people saved are rescued by their neighbors, not by professional emergency responders,” says Portland’s NET Program Coordinator Jeremy Van Keuren. The NET curriculum allows for people to volunteer as emer- gency responders so they can carry out search and rescue oper- ations effectively, but also just as importantly, safely, Van Keuren says. “I think where you find com- munity resilience is a good com- munity to be in during a disaster,” says Van Keuren. “One thing that data does show is that communi- ties that have a stronger fiber tend to bounce back from a disaster better and quicker than commu- nities that don’t.” NET volunteers go through 30 hours of training in areas like di- saster preparedness, search and rescue, patient triage and disaster psychology among other areas. Basic NET training is usually but not always instructed by mem- bers of Portland Fire and Rescue. The disaster preparation comes from the prediction that Portland will face a devastating Cascadia Subduction Zone earth- quake sometime in the future. “It makes it really easy to throw your hands up and say ‘it’s such a big thing that I can’t do anything about it’ and I detect that a lot of people fall into despair or in- difference about it. People don’t C ontinued on P age 4
