By Sharon Noguchi
The San Jose Mercury News
CUPERTINO, Calif. — If there were a poster child for disaster preparedness, Cupertino’s Fairgrove neighborhood would be pictured throughout California.
Over the weekend, as block leaders and other volunteers blitzed Cupertino neighborhoods with information about emergency centers and disaster preparedness, Fairgrove residents knew the drill.
So while many of Cupertino’s 52,000 residents were finding out the location of the nearest neighborhood command centers called ARKs, Fairgrove’s 15 block captains were mostly updating lists as they canvassed their neighborhood behind Hyde Middle School, bounded by Miller and Tantau avenues and Bollinger Road.
In case you’re wondering, Cupertino’s ARKs refer to the Bible’s Noah, not to an acronym.
Fairgrove’s 225 homeowners have organized their own communications and search and rescue teams. The group knows where doctors and nurses live in their neighborhood, who can pedal on a bicycle brigade, who could provide child care in an emergency and where the elderly, medically fragile and non-English speakers live.
“We were here in the ’89 earthquake and started organizing the next year,” said Nancy Burnett, who houses the neighborhood command center at her home and belongs to Cupertino’s volunteer Community Emergency Response Team.
On the weekend of the 20th anniversary of the Loma Prieta quake, Cupertino’s first-ever “Operation Awareness” marshaled 600 volunteers to disseminate information urging residents to prepare for earthquakes and other emergencies. The exercise also tested the city’s emergency-response network, which includes a backbone of 100 volunteers like Burnett.
Each of the city’s six ARKs would serve as neighborhood communication centers, which also could conduct minor rescue operations. ARKs are equipped with either a 20- or 40-foot-long container of supplies such as propane stoves, fire extinguishers, sandbags, stretchers, bleach, masks and “comfort kits” of toothbrushes and deodorant.
“Operation Awareness” went well, said Marsha Hovey, emergency services director. “I’m feeling wonderful.”
The city first sent an automated phone message to all 21,000 residences early Saturday. Volunteers including 250 Boy Scouts and troops of Girl Scouts walked door to door and either talked to someone or left fliers at about half of the city’s 21,000 residences.
“I wish we could have reached all the houses where there are no block leaders,” said Shailesh Sahasrabuddhe, a San Jose resident who used to live in Cupertino and still belongs to the emergency response team covering his old neighborhood.
And though many neighborhoods were organized with block leaders, more are not. It’s difficult to organize apartment dwellers, which concerns Hovey, because they are particularly vulnerable in an earthquake. “What happens to one happens to many,” she said.
For the most part, volunteers met with a welcome reception, and some people so appreciated the city’s effort that they signed up to pass out pamphlets, Hovey said. Canvasser Thorisa Yap said she saw this as part of her mission “to save the world.”
Besides emergency information, the city also disseminated environmental information. Volunteers like Mary Kleis-Downer, of San Jose, working with the environmental group Acterra, walked around to explain about free energy assessments and other “green” programs.
While the Fairgrove neighborhood may be organized, Burnett is worried. “Too many of us on teams now are aging,” said Burnett, 78. On Sunday, she appeared at the Hyde ARK to ask firefighters how they might reach her fire-suspectible neighborhood of Eichlers if streets were jammed with parents trying to pick up children at the three nearby schools.
Fire Capt. Joe Viramontez reassured her that trucks could make it through. Viramontez, of the Santa Clara County Fire Department’s Truck 1, was assessing the organization of the command center. After talking with Incident Commander Barbara Jobe, he came away impressed.
In an emergency, “the worst thing is to have a bunch of people talking on the radio,” he said.
Cupertino’s emergency planners use the same lingo, such as “incident commander,” used by public-safety officers. The team, which plans and operates the ARKs, also manages the volunteer corps of ham radio operators, child-care providers and 150 medical volunteers. Others are arranging shelter for pets, if owners have to evacuate and can’t take Scout or Whiskers with them.
Hovey said the city will take the lessons learned over the weekend in planning next year’s event.
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