On Sunday I had an occasion to reaffirm my absolute love for my neighborhood – and my city, come to think of it. A friend had invited me to participate in the citywide training day for our neighborhood response teams as a pretend reporter, sticking my nose into their work and being in places no layperson should be close to so that they could shush me away, all the while documenting their terrific work.

The idea behind neighborhood volunteers as first responders is reasonably grounded in the assumption that they will likely be first on-the-scene when firefighters and police are slowed by impassable streets or overwhelmed by calls for help in case of a major emergency like the big earthquake that is expected any minute now. (To refresh your memory we are due!)

The Portland Bureau of Emergency Management offers these services:

Neighborhood Emergency Teams (NETs) are Portland residents trained by PBEM and Portland Fire & Rescue to provide emergency disaster assistance within their own neighborhoods. NET members are trained to save lives and property until professional responders can arrive. These volunteers are specially trained to help others without putting themselves in harm’s way. NET members are:

1. Prepared to be self-sufficient for two weeks during any emergency.
2. Able to provide emergency assistance to their family and immediate neighbors.
3. Able to work within an emergency response team to save lives and property in their neighborhood. 
4. Able to guide untrained volunteers who want to help others during a disaster.

On Sunday, several teams with 6 members each swarmed out into the neighborhood finding surprising scenarios that they had to react to – helped by team leaders who knew what they were doing and an instruction manual that allowed them to consult for details.

Radioing back and forth with “headquarters,” they established what the situations were and how to approach the rescue operations.

In one, a baby had to be extricated from a crumbling structure, treated for a head wound and stabilized.

In the other a barrel of highly poisonous and flammable material was leaking into the groundwater and located in the vicinity of a burning truck, aptly represented by a bucket with an emergency flare in it. Luckily in this case “sand bags” and other handy materials were just lying around.

The groups I had the privilege to observe at work had a wonderfully wide age spectrum and an equally diverse distribution of skills and knowledge, now shared by all when the actual, real calls will come in. Luckily, this time around every radio transmission was ended with:

This is a training exercise. May it stay like that forever…..

Music seems to be written for anything known to humanity. Here is an Earthquake Mass beautifully sung by the Tallis Scholars.