NET volunteers are key to city of Portland’s ability to respond to emergencies

Portland’s volunteer Neighborhood Emergency Team program began in the 1990s as a way to help people prepare for “The Big One,” a devastating Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake. But over the decades, NET expanded its mission, helping with all kinds of needs, including extreme weather events, wildfire smoke and even water main breaks. The teams are overseen by the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management, which says the importance of NETs cannot be overstated. In 2021, about 3,000 volunteers put in an estimated 30,000 hours. They work in nearly every neighborhood in the city and last year responded to 70 different incidents. We talk with NET volunteer Bernadette Janet and team leader Mark Ginsberg to learn more about the program and what drives them to contribute in this way.

The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Portland’s Neighborhood Emergency Team program began in the 1990s as a way to help people prepare for “The Big One”, a devastating Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake. But since then, these all volunteer teams have expanded their missions, helping with all kinds of needs, including extreme weather events, wildfire smoke, even water main breaks. The teams are overseen by the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management. Last year, close to 3,000 volunteers put in an estimated 30,000 hours of work while responding to 70 different incidents all over the city. I’m joined now by two volunteers. Bernadette Janet joined her team in Northeast Portland in 2019. Mark Ginsberg has led the Woodstock NET for the last seven years. Welcome to both of you to Think Out Loud.

Mark Ginsberg: Thanks, Dave.

Bernadette Janet: Thank you.

Miller: Bernadette Janet, first, you joined your Neighborhood Emergency Team, as I just noted, three years ago, in 2019. What motivated you to do that?

Janet: I’m very conscious of living on the Ring of Fire. I grew up in California with earthquakes. I was in Washington State when Mount St. Helens went off and then I moved to Alaska, where that takes it to a whole new level. So I belong to that Kennedy generation where I believe in volunteering. What can I do for my community? And so I’ve always been interested in preparedness and encouraging people to have a to-go bag and be prepared.

Miller: So even before 2019, when you joined the team, you’re saying, for decades you had both been aware of the reality of natural disasters and planning for them, at least in your own life?

Janet: Yes, I’m very much an active person in terms of making sure when I move, I know what the risks are. I was the kind of person who had an emergency kit, and encouraged other people to get one for, not just their home, but also their car and their offices. Because when you’ve lived through a winter storm, where people couldn’t get on a bus and had to go back to their office, you realized that having one at home is not enough. And watching Mount St. Helens blow up was a real experience. Something that looks so safe isn’t. But waking up in Alaska in the middle of the night because there’s been shaking and wondering, what do I need to do, made me realize I need to know everything. And so I have approached learning about that and the entire Ring of Fire, in the natural disaster world that way. I even joined the Northwest Geological Society when I later moved to Seattle and then I was learning from geologists all about the land I was living on.

Miller: So it sounds like it’s both a personal and academic interest as well as a very practical one.

Janet: Yes, it is. I travel and when I travel, I’m always looking at things like that. When I went to New Zealand, I wanted to go to the town of Napier because it was destroyed in the 1920s by an earthquake and then totally rebuilt in the art-deco style. And when I went to Greece, I went to Santorini to see where that volcanic eruption had occurred and to look at the ruins from it. So my awareness and involvement with disaster preparedness is sort of extensive.

Miller: Mark Ginsberg, what about you? So as I noted, you have been a member of the Woodstock neighborhoods NET team for 14 years and the leader of it for the last seven. Why did you start?

Ginsberg: There are a lot of different reasons that people become NET members. Some of it, for people like me, is you’re people who want to step up and help your community very actively, to throw your back into it. For a lot of other NET members, though, it’s also about the opportunities to help, whether it’s sitting at a desk or helping with paperwork or sharing information. I personally had a friend who was already a NET, and they knew me pretty well and said, you should do this, it will call to you and as an opportunity for service, to help my community in a way that felt really positive and it definitely did.

Miller: Do you remember the first time, after you’d done your training, we’ll talk about the training, but Mark Ginsberg, the first time that you just, you went out as an official NET member?

Ginsberg: It was flooding. There was flooding and we needed help with storm drains and our whole team went out and helped and we’ve done everything from that to when the tornado touched down in Northeast Portland, we helped establish that perimeter. Many times NET members help Portland Fire and Rescue, as they’re sort of force multipliers, so they can focus on being firefighters and doing technical things that are beyond the scope of what we do.

Miller: What is the relationship of Professional Emergency Responders, like members of Portland Fire and Rescue or paramedics, in terms of what they do and what you do?

Ginsberg: they do the heavy lifting, we create some of the space for them to do their heavy lifting. So if there’s a downed power line, which in the past several years has become a very common use of City of Portland NET members, fire will make sure the scene is safe and that the down power line is under control and historically then, that fire truck or fire engine would stay at the scene, meaning four Portland Fire and Rescue members were not available to do other calls. And in the past five years we’ve trained City NET members so they can go and they can relieve fire and they can stay with that power line until the power company can get there or some other scene changes and it frees up those firefighters, they can get back to the work that only they can do.

Miller: Bernadette, can you give a sense for the training you had to go through before you could officially become a member of your NET?

Janet: Yes. It was several weeks and not just learning about everything from first aid to communications, but also having an actual exam. And that was very exciting because we all have fire extinguishers, but we don’t use them. And so getting to learn how, hands on, to use a fire extinguisher, being able to go into buildings and look for danger and for people to rescue as part of your drill. It was very fulfilling to put everything I learned into work with the final test and we continue to have a lot of ongoing scenarios and during COVID, some of them were done all by computer. Lots of training is ongoing. It didn’t just stop because I passed the tests. Because of COVID, I continue to attend meetings weekly and to get training from that, to also go to FEMA trainings, to go to the OSU Wildlife Fire Webinar, so that I can then give that material to people in my neighborhood, so they know how to be prepared.

Miller: Have you deployed? You only started in 2019 and then came the pandemic. But now that you’re a member, what have you responded to?

Janet: Well, when we had the fire events, the big heat dome, I was able to deploy from home and make calls to people who were known to be at risk for heat and to contact them, let them know where the nearest shelters were, how they could get water, to give them tips, provide them with information about being aware of heat illnesses and what to look for. So I was making calls and that was one deployment then. And to get ready this year, I made a different set of calls to landlords who have properties in our urban heat islands where a similar risk exists, to make sure they knew what resources the city and the county had for them so that they could provide information to their tenants who could be in danger of heat illness.

Dave Miller: It’s a more expansive view of neighborhood emergencies than I was aware of in terms of what NET responds to. And it seems like it is an evolution from a focus on just a, an internationally terrifying disaster, like a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake. What you’re talking about are more frequent, smaller scale, but still serious events that you can be called in to respond to.

Janet: I think what’s important is that if you’re ready for the big earthquake, you’re also ready for the winter storm, for the fire. It’s painful to watch people fleeing fire and going to a shelter with nothing but what they have on their back and by helping our communities to become resilient for an earthquake, we’re helping them become resilient for any potential disaster.

Miller: Mark Ginsberg, how important is it to, I mean, we heard about the training. I know you all have emergency go bags that have equipment you might need and communications tools and various rescue tools. But how important is it simply to know the members of your community, to know the people who live in your neighborhoods?

Ginsberg: It’s very important because it tells us who is there to help. You know, every disaster, we know when we need help, 80% of the people who help are not professionals. They’re either volunteers like Bernadette and myself or they’re just people in the neighborhood who step up and say how can I help? And so, if you know your neighbors and you know, there’s someone who knows construction or a doctor or a nurse or even just people who are calm and can be useful and helpful. All of that helps every single time.

Miller: Bernadette, has becoming a member of your NET, has it led you to actually have more connections with the people in your neighborhood?

Janet: Yes, I had some people’s emails, but I didn’t have any use for them until becoming a Neighborhood Emergency Team member. And now I can actively communicate with people who live near me even while I’m quarantining, to let them know whatever kind of safety information and preparedness information that they need and I can also alert them to things like, it’s time to clear the gutters to make sure we don’t have flooding on our street. And so I’m interacting more with people that I may have had a passing relationship with.

Miller: Mark Ginsberg, I hope this question comes out the way it’s intended, but I’m wondering if, on some level, you look forward to getting a call, not because you want people to be in trouble, but because it feels good to help out and to be useful and and to be a part of a team?

Ginsberg: I think for anybody who wants to help, knowing that they have the skills and then being presented with the opportunity to use them, yes, of course we want to help, nobody wants to see other people hurt or displaced or have their property damaged. But the knowledge that we all have is great to be able to use. And I agree with Bernadette that the training is an opportunity, in the city of Portland, to be clear, offers it free to anybody who lives or works in the city of Portland. And once you have that training and become a NET member, you just carry that with you, knowing that you have it, whether you’re here or whether you’re somewhere else. The training itself is the same nationally. It’s a federally established curriculum with some additional local pieces so that if Bernadette or I was somewhere else and an emergency happened, we can also go to the local teams, identify ourselves and say, do you need help?

Miller: Bernadette, you, it seems like you’re a world traveler. You’re telling us about your many travels. When you go elsewhere, now, even out of the country, do you think about responding to emergencies?

Janet: Well, I’ll tell you, this isn’t an out of the country thing necessarily. But when I was in Hawaii, on the back of the door of the hotel, it tells you where to go in case of a fire. And I called the front desk and said, what about if there’s a tsunami warning? And they said, we have to call somebody else, and I tracked that person down and talked to them about it. Most of the time, I’m just always aware of my surroundings. I make sure that I have a fold up little emergency bag on me at all times, a flashlight, a small first aid kit. When I’m traveling, I’m aware of heat events because I’ve unfortunately experienced them and I’m, I’m more conscious of it. I don’t always know who to go to, but I’m interested in the places I travel, what are the dangers that have been faced and what could I potentially run into when I travel?

Miller: Bernadette Janet and Mark Ginsberg, thanks very much.

Janet: Thank you.

Miller: Bernadette Janet and Mark Ginsberg are both NET volunteers, Mark Ginsberg in Southeast Portland and Bernadette Janet in Northeast Portland.

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