pages: CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities/2016-12-14.pdf, 3
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CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities | 2016-12-14 | 3 | place. When we look at planning, we look at a few things. We look at our plan in the city which helps us operate in a disaster, gives us guidance or what we're going to do and how we going to handle a disaster. We also look for continuity of operation within the city. That's making sure all our staff comes back to work and we're able to continue to conduct business as a city. Then we looked at shelter planning for disasters, and this is really a key component. As you probably know, there's a lot of laws and rules around functional needs individuals and it's really important. Sharon Oliver: We have learned throughout the United States that we need to be inclusive. That means everybody, no matter what language you speak, what color you are, what kind of need do you have, we need to provide for that. That and our pets, so we also include our pets, it's like our whole community. When we look at shelter planning, the functional needs community is a diverse group all in itself, because you can't say functional needs as you know and one size will fit all. It does not. First of all, we hope that we don't even have to move you from your home, but if we do, we have to have a place where your needs are met. Access for wheelchairs, cots that you can sleep on, we just talked about braille as I was walking in so that we can sign properly SO that you can get in and get out without heartaches. That's part of our planning processes as well. Sharon Oliver: And then once we get these plans in place, and I mentioned sheltering because sheltering is a big deal for us. We have old infrastructure and old buildings, they're not all entirely accessible. We work towards accessibility, we have policies in place for accessibility, but older buildings don't always come up to code because they haven't need re-building or remodeling yet. If you do a remodel, you have to bring things up to code. If you build a new building, you have to build to code, but we're an old city. When we plan, we have to look at what are all our options for sheltering, and what would we need to do even right there in the moment to bring something close enough so that everybody could use the shelter. Sharon Oliver: And then we work with the public to have the public prepared. We're a small city staff in the big scheme of things. So for example we have 24 firefighters on duty each day, we have 78,000 residents. You can see the numbers outnumber us by a great deal, so training our citizens, training you, the public, to have a preparedness plan so that you are as self-sufficient as possible helps us all because there are people who will never plan and we're going to have to help them. So the more people we have trained and have a plan, the better off we are. Sharon Oliver: We also plan for pets. In this community there's probably a lot of service animals, and they have a special place in sheltering and others. But it doesn't really matter, we love our pets, regardless whether your pet is a service animal or not, that pet's important to us and we plan for that. We affiliate volunteers, I mentioned before the Alameda CERT teams, Community Emergency Response Teams, so we have close to 300 active members and they are engaged every day. We just had a walking search for a child from one of the schools here. She turned up safe and sound, she had gone to a friend's house but she wasn't in school. The police rallied our CERT teams and they did a walking search for her. So, that group is very engaged and affiliated with us. Then we also want to look at our business districts and encourage them to have continuity of operation plans. That means that if they get knocked off out of their business, that they are able to re-bound and re-open. We know if businesses don't have a continuity of operation plan, they often don't reopen, and that's a direct impact on our citizens' ability to shop and do business. Sharon Oliver: Okay, so, planning for the functional needs community. So we're encouraging all citizens to prepare. Preparedness might look different to different people. In fact it does, there's really no one size fits all regardless. Having a plan, having your community connected and networking, having a system of welfare checks. I will tell you in the past, at least three times we attempted to register folks who had some sort of special needs so we could, in a disaster, do welfare checks. What we discovered and it may have changed, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, the functional need | CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities/2016-12-14.pdf |