From earthquakes to wildfires, the threat of community emergencies is ever present for ABHOW’s California communities. That’s why residents of Piedmont Gardens are learning more about what they can do to help each other should disaster strike.

Residents of Oakland's Piedmont Gardens are looking to their neighbors at The Terraces of Los Gatos for advice on starting their own Citizen’s Emergency Response Team (CERT). CERT teams throughout the United States are educated about disaster preparedness and trained in basic response skills through the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA).

Members of the Piedmont Gardens safety committee, made of residents interested in helping their neighbors in the event of an emergency, visited their sister community to see how the CERT program at Los Gatos could be applied to the requirements of Piedmont Gardens.

Both communities, by virtue of their geographic locations, could potentially be affected by significant safety emergencies – earthquakes and wildfires being the most likely, says Pamela Bancroft, director of sales, marketing and community relations at the community.

“We’ve been pretty well educated in California to know that we may be 48 to 72 hours without any help at all” after a major fire or earthquake, Bancroft says. “So it behooves us to have a plan to help each other.”

It’s that looming threat, plus the challenge of Piedmont Gardens being a high-rise community, that prompted Akio “Joe” Shimizu, the head of Piedmont Gardens’ safety committee, to consider forming a CERT team.

Shimizu, a retired airline marketing executive, was part of the group that visited the Terraces of Los Gatos to see how its team worked and to explore ways residents of the Oakland community could apply the same practices.

Los Gatos’ CERT program boasts more than 60 members and is divided into five sub-committees, frequently staffed along the lines of residents’ former professions, says John Langford, director of facilities for The Terraces of Los Gatos.
For instance, retired nurses and physicians staff the first aid team and former engineers lean toward the damage assessment team. Other teams include search and rescue, companionship and communications.

Shimizu notes that Piedmont Gardens also has a large repository of knowledge among its residents, but it also has additional challenges, such as being a high-rise building and having a larger number of residents who are considered medically frail.

The Piedmont Gardens safety committee has planned a meeting with an emergency consultant who helps the Oakland Fire Department handle high-rise emergencies to gain some perspective on what would be required from residents.

Still, the help he and the other committee members have received from The Terraces of Los Gatos CERT team is invaluable. “They have had it up and running for several years now,” he says. “They are very experienced.”

This article was featured in the June 2008 issue of ABHOW Words.
To learn more about Piedmont Gardens click here.