Page 11 - Sonoma County Gazette Juy 2019

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“Our innate abilities to make good decisions are NOT designed well to deal with RARE THREATS for which we have LITTLE EXPERIENCE.”
One way of enhancing our onboard abilities would be to devise a plan to identify those threats, learn some basic steps to adequately respond to them and gain experience in implementing these steps.
The Sebastopol Map Your neighborhood (MYN) program provides a simple 9 step planning tool to address enhancing our response abilities and doing so based not in our well established reliance on individualism but in the basic geographic area we spend most of our time - our immediate neighborhood.
In the New York Times 2018 article, “The Neighborhood Is the Unit of Change”, columnist David Brooks says,
“It could be that the neighborhood, not the individual, is the essential unit of social change. If you’re trying to improve lives, maybe you have to think about changing many elements of a single neighborhood, in a systematic way, at a steady pace.”
An important lesson gleaned from being alive for almost any length of time is you can’t do it all by yourself. As important as individualism and taking responsibility for “self” is, most of us live in community with others. And the standard unit in community is the neighborhood.
In west county, a neighborhood could be 4 houses on a country lane or 20 houses on one block in town. Using the MYN program as a planning tool allows you (and your neighbors) to define the neighborhood as you choose - whatever size allows for the most effective communication. Organizing and implementing the MYN program will help you to work together and learn how to protect your families, friends and property.
MYN neighborhood participants will:
• Learn the “9 Steps” each household and neighborhood can take to be prepared
• Identify the skills and equipment each neighbor has that would be useful • Create a Neighborhood Map identifying the shut-off locations for the gas,
electric and water (wells too) of each house
• Create a confidential contact list to help identify needs and skills within
the neighborhood. And to catalogue equipment, tools and supplies that
are available incase of an emergency.
• Learn how to work together as a team to evaluate your neighborhood
during the first hour after a disaster
One definition of a disaster is when all the resources typically available by calling 911 are overwhelmed and not available to help us.
If we are not in the immediate area of the disaster, we are likely dealing with levels of emergency that, in many instances, can be anticipated through proactive collaborative effort, planned for using simplified steps and responded to in tested ways that can be profound to all participating.
Our area is anticipated to experience a hot and dry summer. Many
talk about there no longer being a “fire season” but simply an on-going susceptibility to high fire danger. Whether we actually experience a fire in our immediate area or not, we could be impacted by loss of electric power for extended periods during planned power shut-offs THIS SUMMER. This is an emergency situation that is clearly identified and anticipated ahead of time, can be planned for and can be responded to in ways that remove or reduce impacts to you, your family and neighborhood.
Although the Map Your Neighborhood program does not address such power shut-offs directly, it does provide the tools for you to collaborate and identify the issues you might experience and helps you plan what you, your family and your neighbors might do to move through it with minimal impact. These high-probability, low-impact power shut-offs are excellent opportunities for you to work with your family and your neighbors in planning and responding together.
We never know when a real disaster may strike in our immediate area, but we do know being prepared is the first step toward a better outcome. Your efforts implementing the MYN program in your neighborhood in anticipation of losing power for extended periods can help provide the resources needed to make your neighborhood ready for any disaster.
Map Your neighborhood (MYN) was established in the Washington State Emergency managemen © KuAnn K. Johnson PHD . Vopies of the guide can be purchased in quantities from 5 to 250 to share with your neighbors. (the more you buy the less expensive they are. Ex. 250 costs 40¢ each) They are also available in Spanish: www.myprint.wa.gov or 360-664-4343
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