By Kevin Howe
Monterey County Herald
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — “It’s better to be a rescuer than a victim.”
That’s what motivated Cathy Bargenquast of Pebble Beach to sign up for Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training in her community, and she and other volunteers from CERT and the Carmel chapter of the American Red Cross fanned out through Pebble Beach Sunday to distribute information packets to residents of what services are available in case of a disaster or other emergency.
The packets include information on Pebble Beach Community Services District’s “Reverse 911" emergency telephone notification disaster preparedness information and brochures on Red Cross and CERT programs, said Fire Capt. Jennifer Valdez, who organized the event.
Approximately 40 volunteers, 10 of them from the Red Cross chapter, also will be going door-to-door in Pebble Beach from 10a.m. to 4p.m. today through Sunday to contact 650 houses in Del Monte Forest, said Battalion Chief Robin Hamelin.
“Reverse 911" is a system in which people who may be housebound and in need of help are called daily or weekly, he said. If no one responds to a call, emergency help is sent to the address. So far 170 residents are in the Reverse 911 database, Hamelin said.
In addition to providing information that will help residents prepare for an emergency and that could save lives, the distribution will be a test of how effective the volunteers are in passing out the packets, Valdez said. In a public health emergency, CERT and Red Cross volunteers might be called on to pass out warning notices, medications, food, water or other supplies.
“If there was a major disaster, we’d like to know how long it takes to get and disseminate information,” Valdez said.
She credited CERT volunteer Doris Nashimoto, a dentist who divides her homes between San Mateo on weekdays and Pebble Beach on weekends, with sparking the idea for the door-to-door contact exercise. “She talked it up. It was a good idea.”
Nashimoto said she got involved in civilian disaster training because “I wanted to be involved in the community, and I like to be self-reliant and know what to do in an emergency.”
Valdez briefed the disaster workers on what to do if they encounter locked gates, angry dogs or empty houses. Each carried a parcel map and a set of marker pens to color-code what they found: green for someone at home and personally contacted; yellow for a house where information was left, pink for property being sold or a vacant lot.
“A lot of residents here have ‘0' addresses,” Valdez said, meaning that if a person dials 911 and doesn’t have an address registered with the phone number he or she is calling from, the best the 911 dispatcher can do is give a street name. The district would like to correct that and get people’s telephones linked to address numbers when residents make emergency calls.
Bargenquast said she signed up for disaster training after last winter’s power outage in Pebble Beach. “We had no power for six days.”
Other volunteers include David Deline of Marina’s CERT, who had been a volunteer firefighter in Marina for 13 years, and retired Pacific Grove Middle School teacher Bruce Belknap, who got involved because he had been helping a disabled Pebble Beach neighbor, and has been donating his computer skills to the CERT program.
Many of the volunteers are with the Red Cross and CERT, said Renata Rudolph, director of programs and services for the Carmel Red Cross chapter.
She turned out in CERT uniform Sunday, and said the information distribution was a good drill for learning how long it takes to get the word out when telephone service or the Internet might be disabled during a winter storm or other disaster.
Red Cross volunteers are trained to work in evacuation shelters or provide food and clothing, she said, while CERT workers are “first responders” who take part in searches, rescues, traffic control and other services when regular public safety organizations are overwhelmed.
CERT workers go into action wherever disaster strikes, said David Jones, a retired state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection firefighter, who found himself directing traffic during a flood while he was vacationing in Kihei, Hawaii in December. He takes his reflective CERT safety vest and first aid kit wherever he goes.