BARRON PARK NEEDS MORE PANDAS
PANDA (Palo Alto Neighborhood Disaster Activity) is a program
designed to assist the Palo Alto Fire and Police Departments in the
event of a major disaster. PANDA is our City's name for a Community
Emergency Response Team (CERT), as such teams are usually designated
throughout California.
At any given time, only about a quarter of the City of Palo Alto Fire
and Police personnel are on duty. During a major emergency, these
personnel inevitably will focus on the major facilities (e.g.,
Stanford Hospital). Many off-duty Fire and Police personnel live
several hours' drive from Palo Alto, some in the Central Valley or
even the Sierra Foothills. A major earthquake, particularly on the
Hayward fault, may well make freeways and bridges impassable for many
days, preventing these off-duty personnel from reaching Palo Alto.
Consequently, in a major disaster, individuals and families in
residential neighborhoods will have to be on their own, at least for
72 hours. In a catastrophic earthquake affecting the entire Bay Area,
these 72 hours may lengthen into a week or more.
PANDA is a focused effort of the City of Palo Alto to deal with such
a situation. PANDA consists of Palo Alto citizen volunteers who have
undergone a training program in emergency disaster assistance and are
prepared to supplement the activities of City personnel during an
emergency. This training includes:
In recent months, PANDAs in District 5 have taken the initiative to
organize themselves from the ground up, under the leadership of Ruth
Satterthwaite, a resident of Greenacres II. We have held several
meetings of active personnel, in great part just to get to know each
other and to provide a basis for constructive interaction during an
emergency. We have held several drills to test how well we can
communicate using our FRS/GMRS radios, we have set up a meeting with
the Captain at Fire Station 5, and we have developed maps of District
5 that show each address and whether residents of that address are
PANDAs, HAM radio operators, trained medical personnel, etc.
The map of Barron Park shown in the accompanying figure gives us
great pause. I had expected the PANDAs in Barron Park to be evenly
distributed geographically. Was I wrong! The map shows clearly that
PANDAs are concentrated in two small areas: (1) the area along Los
Robles Avenue near El Camino Real, and (2) southernmost Barron Park,
near Laguna Avenue. I was amazed to see that in a broad swath of
Barron Park extending from Arastradero all the way to Chemalus there
are absolutely no PANDAs (see area within the dashed line on the
figure).
So what? What's the big deal? Certainly, on a normal day, no one
would care. But in the event of a major disaster, this is a huge area
without any trained workers to serve as leaders and coordinators.
Certainly many people will pitch in and help their neighbors. But
their well-meaning efforts would be far more effective if they had
the basic training in disaster response provided by the PANDA program.
Hence the pitch of this article. If you live within the dashed line
of the accompanying figure, please consider taking advantage of the
free PANDA training offered by the Office of Emergency Services of
the City of Palo Alto. Several of these courses will be offered in
the fall of 2005:
by Patrick Muffler, BPA Emergency Chair email.
Damage assessment
PANDAs can draw on dedicated caches of emergency equipment in
trailers at each of the six city fire stations. Each trailer is also
equipped with an amateur (HAM) radio for emergency communications
with the Palo Alto Emergency Operations Center and with other PANDA
trailers, as well as FRS radios for intra-neighborhood communication.
All of Barron Park is in Fire District 5, located at Arastradero Road
and Clemo Avenue, adjacent to Juana Briones Park. District 5 covers
not only Barron Park, but also the Ventura, Monroe Park, Charleston
Meadows, Greenacres I, Greenacres II, and Greater Miranda
neighborhoods. In emergencies, PANDAs from these neighborhoods are
trained to organize an Incident Command Structure at the Station 5
PANDA trailer and to serve as leaders in helping our neighborhoods
respond to the disaster.
Utility control
Recognition of hazardous materials
Disaster Medical Operations
Search & Rescue
Fire Suppression
Incident Command Post
Terrorism Awareness
Disaster Psychology
Operating the PANDA trailer
Field Exercise
Panda Basic 05-05
Please consider taking one of these classes and thus acquiring the
training necessary to be an effective supplement to the Palo Alto
Fire and Police Departments in the event that a major disaster should
strike our neighborhood. To enroll, call Barbara Cimino at the Palo
Alto Office of Emergency Services at 617-3197 (Monday-Friday, 8 am to
5 pm). Or call me at 493-6439 and I shall be glad to help you.
Tuesday 20 Sept., Wednesday 21 Sept., and Thursday 22 Sept.: 9:00 am
to 4:30 pm.
Panda Basic 05-06
Wednesdays Oct. 12, 19, & 26, Nov. 2, & 16: 9:00 am to 12:00 noon
Saturday Nov. 5: 9:00 am to 4:00 pm (field exercise)
Panda Basic 05-07
Wednesdays Oct. 12, 19, & 26, Nov. 2, & 16: 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm
Saturday Nov. 5: 9:00 am to 4:00 pm (field exercise)