On March 14, SF CARD launched a social media contest inviting our Facebook fans to either 'Like' us and post a comment or to follow us on Twitter in order to be entered to win a 4-person emergency backpack valued at more than $100.  

We're delighted to announce that the winner of our social media contest is Ms. Debbie Christou of Manteca, California. Congratulations to Debbie and we thank her for helping us to spread the message of preparedness! More and more, social media is a vital tool for communicating important information in a disaster and we want as many of our partners and allies connected as possible.  

As always you can be a part of our Facebook community by liking what we do and follow us (and see who we follow!) on Twitter by clicking here.

In the first quarter of 2012, two local neighborhoods did something super cool. Individuals representing a variety of nonprofit, faith-based, and home owners associations attended a disaster preparedness workshop. What was unique about these workshops were that the agendas and topics of each training session were created by the neighborhood stakeholders. Individuals representing and working in a specific neighborhood worked with SF CARD and American Red Cross to develop a disaster preparedness conference. The conferences primarily focused on organizational preparedness with topics that helped attendees become empowered and better prepared so that they could be ready to respond with their organizations to the next emergency or disaster.

Those neighborhoods were Diamond Heights and Treasure Island.

The following is a brief recap of both neighborhood workshops.

Diamond Heights Emergency Preparedness Working Group...

For the past several years, the Diamond Heights Emergency Preparedness Working Group has gotten together once a month to talk about disasters. Individuals from a variety of Diamond Heights based organizations and businesses have come together to plan for the next big earthquake. They have decided to work together before something happens. After completing a fantastic personal preparedness website ( http://disasterreadydhsf.com) geared towards the residents of the Diamond Heights neighborhood, members of the Committee wanted to do more, such as, focus on organizational planning. So with the help of SF CARD and American Red Cross, they developed an agenda, divided responsibilities for committee members, and did all they could to recruit attendees.

The Diamond Heights Readiness Conference took place on March 8th and March 13th, 2012. During the planning process, committee members felt a half-day workshop, divided between 2 days was more realistic for the organizations to send staff during a work day. They focused on topics including disaster communication such as how and what to communicate with staff and clients. Red Cross gave a great presentation on providing mental health services for staff during a disaster, and SF CARD presented on developing organizational personal preparedness program. In addition to receiving some great training, they finished each session by discussing how they would work together to continue planning and to focus as a community to accomplish a few preparedness goals. On docket for the remainder of the year is a neighborhood party with disaster prep as the theme, and they are planning on working a few disaster prep goals together as a group such as holding a neighborhood exercise.

According to Betsy Eddy, Chair of the Workgroup, "For me, the highlights of the conference were the two discussions facilitated by Brian Whitlow in which we broke into agency groups to discuss projects and goals.  It was exciting to see each of the twelve agencies present so raptly involved in discussing next steps for their emergency planning.  Our Diamond Heights Disaster Ready Workgroup was delighted with the conference and with the progress made in working together on providing neighborhood assistance and resources after a disaster or a community emergency."

For more information on this conference, to rsvp for the upcoming party, and overall information Diamond Heights Emergency Preparedness Working Group, contact Betsy Eddy at  betsy.eddy@gmail.com, (415) 867-5774.

Treasure Island Communications and Disaster Readiness Planning Conference...

In July 2011, SF CARD, American Red Cross Bay Area Chapter, and Providence Baptist Church worked together to put on a neighborhood disaster preparedness conference. Shannon Wise, TIHDI Administrator, attended the conference, liked what she witnessed and participated in, and asked if SF CARD could help her replicate the conference in her community on Treasure Island. Since helping neighborhoods prepare is part of our organizational mission and Shannon was so jazzed about the venture, we were super excited to be asked to assist.

Throughout the Fall of 2011 and 1st quarter of 2012, SF CARD attended the monthly meetings of the Treasure Island Workgroup. With input from representatives from over 12 organizations based on Treasure Island, an agenda was developed with training topics for their neighborhood conference. Primarily their conference focused on communication and emergency management. On March 26, 2012, 56 people attended the conference, received training from SF CARD on the Incident Command System. During the ICS portion of the conference, teams of seven got together and faced several different disaster scenarios. Working with colleagues from their organization or others from other organizations, they worked as a team to develop solutions and respond. When the after-action review of the ICS session took place, each team performed well and got to see how each group would respond using ICS.

The conference was a huge success, and agencies that participated walked away with a better understanding of their roles in assisting their community to respond to the next major disaster. Furthermore, several ideas were discussed and the conference helped Treasure Island Workgroup members come up with ideas and steps to focus on the remainder of 2012. The conference was not the end of the preparedness process, but more of a beginning where everyone got a better understanding of what they need to do as a community to come together to prepare. Additionally, attendees walked away from the conference better understanding that preparedness is an ongoing process and it is important to work together.

According to Shannon (Wise), "We had a total of 62 registered attendees of which about 56 showed up.   By far, the best presentation was done by SF Card.  Elisabeth did a wonderful job and the attendees were very interactive when it came to the ICS group exercises.   It was also great to have Treasure Island Director of Operations, Mirian Saez, in attendance to speak as well."

The following organizations were represented:

• Boys and Girls Club
• CCCYO - Catholic Charities
• CHP Community Housing Partnership
• Fotep-HAFC Walden House
• Good Neighbors Association
• Job Corps
• Rubicon Programs
• Swords to Plowshares
• TIDA- Treasure Island Development Authority
• TIHDI - Treasure Island Homeless Development Initiative
• Toolworks
• Treasure Island Villages/John Stewart Prop Mgt Company
• YMCA of Treasure Island

• Calling all Healthcare Facilities, sign-up for CAHAN 
• Disaster Healthcare News in SF 
• Heads-up, cloud-based EHRs raise unique HIPAA challenges

Yesterday will mark the 106th anniversary of the day a 7.9 earthquake ripped open the San Andres fault and rocked the West from the Oregon border to Los Angeles. This tremor leveled much of San Francisco and led to a fire that consumed much of what was still standing. What began as a solid minute of shaking at 5:12 am on April 18th, 1906 ended up as the greatest loss of life from a natural disaster in California history.

As we look back at this historic moment, one window on the events that transpired are first person accounts from the many prominent people who happened to be present for the event. San Francisco at that time was the most populous and by a considerable margin the most cosmopolitan city in California. Many people of note were drawn to the Bay Area and yet others were born here as natives.

Ansel Adams

The photographer who made images of the West, especially spectacular Yosemite, famous the world over was a San Francisco native who was home during the quake.   

"Born in his family's San Francisco flat in the Western Addition, Ansel's father moved them to be near healthy ocean air. The family home, built on the sand dunes at the western edge of San Francisco facing the Pacific Ocean, was surrounded by gardens and an adjacent green house.

Ansel Adams was four years old when he survived the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. At 5:15 in the morning of April 18, Adams and his nanny, Nelly, were jolted awake by a major noise.

Our beds were moving violently about....The roaring, swaying, moving, and grinding continued for what seemed like a long time; it actually took less than a minute. Then, there was an eerie silence with only the surf sounds coming through the shattered window and an occasional crash of plaster and tinkle of glass from downstairs.

The home suffered some damage - the brick chimney of the greenhouse crashed, and his mother's fireplace collapsed along with the living room fireplace. Adams, however, wore the mark of the disaster, a broken nose from a tumble into a brick garden wall during a severe aftershock. As Adams remarked later, " My closest experience with profound human suffering was that earthquake and fire."

Source: mceer.buffalo.edu/1906_Earthquake/personal_stories/ansel-adams.asp  

Sarah Winchester  

Heiress to the Winchester Rifle fortune and haunted by spirits of the dead to whom she thought her fortune was owed, Sarah Winchester by 1906 was deep into an obsession that would consume her the rest of her life.   She had been constructing the whimsical estate, known by California natives of today as "The Winchester Mystery House," with no clear plan, and she had been at this project for years. Asleep in her favorite bedroom at the San Jose estate at the time of the tremor, she was subsequently trapped and it took her servants several hours to locate her and then to open the bedroom door to free her. According to Winchester lore, Sarah thought the earthquake was a message from the spirit world about the amount of money she was targeting towards that part of house's construction. According to the Winchester Mystery House website,'after having the structural damage repaired, she immediately ordered the front thirty rooms sealed up. ' She never again occupied her San Jose ranch and home full time.  

Jack London

Perhaps one of the most important accounts we have is from famous author Jack London, the author of White Fang and other tales of the Western wilderness. At the time he and his wife lived on ranch land in Glen Ellen, north of San Francisco and hit hard by the earthquake. He composed a dispatch from the front lines for Collier's magazine in New York, for as they put it:

'Upon receipt of the first news of the earthquake, Collier's telegraphed to Mr. Jack London-who lives only forty miles from San Francisco-requesting him to go to the scene of the disaster and write the story of what he saw. Mr. London started at once, and he sent the following dramatic description of the tragic events he witnessed in the burning city.'

London had told his wife, 'I'll never write about this for anybody, no, I'll never write a word about it. What use trying? Only could one string big words together and curse the futility of them.'

But Collier's was paying a pretty penny and London had considerable debt. His words were published on May 5th, fewer than 3 weeks later, and it is a spectacular and harrowing account, by any measure. You can read it in its entirety here. 

Mr. Bert L. Smith, Jr.

Of course, most of the survivors of 1906 quake and fire were not famous, but that does not make their accounts any less colorful. This 1977 interview, part of a US Geological Survey, with a survivor, Mr. Bert L. Smith, Jr. is a very engaging example. Bert was a young child traveling with his parents at the time, and his story gives a snapshot not only of the event but also of the rags-to-riches-to-rags economy of the West in the early 20th Century.  

The Smiths had visited San Francisco at an 'affluent' point in their family life, so that the parents could see world famous opera tenor Enrico Caruso at the San Francisco Opera house. As it was in their budget at the time, the family stayed at the glamorous Palace Hotel, pictured after the fire, below.  

Because the Hotel Manager was convinced that the hotel was destined to burn, the Smiths and the other guests were allowed to keep their hotel keys as mementos of the experience.  

Smith shares colorful stories of other big quakes he felt in California during his lifetime, as well as the impact that the 1906 quake had on mother:

"I don't think my mother ever recovered from the shock of going through something like that. From that day on she always wanted to have a light on at night or a candle with matches. She was never going to be caught in the dark again. She always had a money belt with money in it of course. When you think about it, these were very sensible precautions."

All of these years later, this preparedness advice is still relevant. And Smith added in 1977, yet more advice that is consistent with current recommendations 

"Earthquakes are something we have to live with. You can take a few simple precautions. You can do certain things. If we get another big one, then so be it. That's life."

An Excerpt from The Bay Citizen

By Matt Smith

April 14th, 2012 

In a city known for accommodating pets - where pet dogs, not to mention cats, outnumber the city's school-age children - and where local laws regulate doghouse architecture, San Francisco emergency planners are working to take care of pets in the next big earthquake.

The planners hope legions of trained pet-disaster responders will help transport household dogs, cats, rodents and reptiles to 125 temporary animal shelters. Injured pets will be treated at a $300,000 mobile animal disaster medical command unit. And thanks to a no-pets-left-behind policy promoted by the city's department of Animal Care and Control, when people are rescued from collapsed or burning sections of town, their dogs, cats, birds and other animals will most likely be rescued, too.

To continue reading the article, go to Fluffy Comes Too. 

It's April again and that means National Preparedness Month!  And if you are like many Americans, you have a furry family friend or two who shares your home and need your preparedness skills to keep them safe in a disaster.   It can feel like a chore to stock up on water and batteries - take a break from building your kit and build one for your animal friends - they'll thank you for it!

The obvious things to include are food and water, a toy or two, a carrier, and any necessary medications or medical documentation (proof of insurance if you have pet insurance is key!). As is true with human emergency preparedness kits, you can buy them pre-assembled. I recently stumbled across these examples: the ER Emergency Ration Dog Survival kit for pups and a Catastrophe for Cats 35-piece kit that demonstrates what type of items you might want to include for kitties. 

You may be able to assemble your own from items you have at home, however. The San Francisco SPCA, in collaboration with partners such as Paws and Animal Care and Control, offers an impressive and comprehensive Disaster Planning for Pets resource as part of the San Francisco Disaster Preparedness Coalition for Animals.  Here's an excerpt that details what they recommend for a disaster kit for your pet:

• harnesses/leashes/collars
• their regular food (at least a 7 day supply for each animal), bottled water for 7 days, non-spill bowls, a manual can opener and plastic can lid for canned pet food
• litter boxes, litter and a scoop for cats
• fresh bedding for small mammals
• any medications that are routinely used, a copy of your pet's vaccine history, any special medical records for chronic conditions and a copy of your pet's microchip number
• phone numbers for your emergency contacts, relatives and family
• phone numbers and locations of your vet and the local emergency clinic, the phone numbers and location for SF Animal Care and Control
• plastic bags for feces clean up
• a Pet first aid kit and Pet First Aid book
• recent photos of the pet (especially with you in the picture)
• and any long-term caging you might need (baby gates, X-pens, portable fencing...)

They include specific pet first aid information that is critical for any pet owner. To that list, I would add that as with a child (or yourself!) the stress of responding to an emergency will be a very real thing for your pet - if your animal has a cherished toy that comforts them, consider including it (or one very similar) in their kit. It's also becoming more common for people to plan forward for a pet-related emergency by getting them micro-chipped, a process by which a scannable microchip with a unique code is implanted under your pet's skin. This option may not appeal to everyone but it is increasingly available at your local vet. More information can be found here.  

Finally, remember to work your pet into your plan! Make sure your evacuation and meet-up plans incorporate the time and logistics of gathering your pets and their kits. Keep their hiding places and habits when fearful in mind - no one wants to go hunting for Mittens in the back yard after a big Quake! A little forward thinking is all you need to increase the safety of your whole family - not just the human beings. Happy (Pet) Preparedness Month!

Upcoming Events and Trainings Spotlighted:

Schedule of FREE Trainings by SF CARD, 2012*

(*for nonprofits and faith-based organizations)

STAFF READINESS

The SF CARD Staff Readiness training course is designed to help the staff of nonprofit and faith-based organizations to individually prepare for a disaster. The class is presented using a workbook to enable students to complete several of the components of staff preparedness in the classroom setting. The SF CARD Preparing Staff for Emergencies Workbook covers the following:

• Education on Emergencies - "What to do when a specific emergency happens?"
• Getting your family prepared - Home and go-kits, mitigating your home & your surroundings, and identifying those things you love.
• Pre-planning for emergencies - Family Communication Plan, Evacuation Plan: Getting out of the House, and Rally Spot: Reunifying with a loved one.
• Exercises and Resources - How to use what you have, Whistle & Flashlight exercise, and resources for Information and Supplies. (This interactive class lasts for an hour.)

INCIDENT COMMAND SYSTEM

The SF CARD Incident Command System (ICS) training is designed to teach nonprofit and faith-based organization staff and volunteers how to use this nationally accepted and tested disaster response and management system. This course introduces the Incident Command System by describing the history, features, principles, and organizational structure of the Incident Command System. The training also uses a tabletop exercise to reinforce the learning objectives in a scenario setting.

(This interactive class lasts for three hours.)

All these trainings are free and will take place at SF CARD. The address is 1675 California Street, San Francisco, CA 94109 (in the Volunteer Center).

SCHEDULE OF TRAININGS 2012:

April 20th           ICS training - 1 - 4 pm

July 18th             Staff Readiness training - 10 am - 12 pm

July 20th             ICS training - 1 - 4 pm

October 17th      Staff Readiness training - 10 am - 12 pm

October 19th      ICS training - 1 - 4 pm

Please RSVP to Elisabeth Whitney:

elisabeth@sfcard.org (415) 955-8946 x 253

We look forward to seeing you then! Thank you.

Diversity Conference - Applies to Disaster Health Also

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If you're interested in finding out about other ongoing events, trainings, & services visit the following agency specific websites: