In 2006, the Santa Barbara Civil Grand Jury released a report that identified gaps in community preparedness, including recommending that the OES needed to be a stand-alone government department. The Orfalea Foundations, a Santa Barbara-based philanthropic organization, took interest in resolving the county’s preparedness issues and developed the Aware & Prepare initiative.
Natalie Orfalea had noticed that the foundation was receiving requests related to emergency preparedness programs, according to Barbara Andersen, the Aware & Prepare Initiative consultant for the Orfalea Foundations. Those requests, and Orfalea’s desire to help the community, prompted her to approach the county and James Lee Witt Associates. Together they established a partnership to aid the community’s disaster preparedness and response capabilities.
“The idea from the Orfalea Foundations was we get everybody together in the same room and work together as much as possible in a strategic way, rather than having our various agencies and resources go to individual funders and end up not working in a coordinated manner,” said Michael Harris, emergency operations chief of the OES.
One of the first changes made regarding the Santa Barbara Civil Grand Jury’s report was the removal of the OES from the fire department, according to Harris. “[Michael] Brown, the county executive officer, moved OES within the County Executive Office and brought me in to work with the staff to put some strategic direction to the department, add some forward movement and address some things that needed improvement,” he said.
The OES, Orfalea Foundations and James Lee Witt Associates worked together to determine priority themes and funding areas for improvement of emergency preparedness. The seven priorities were:
- public education and awareness;
- coordination and communication;
- preparedness;
- emergency public information;
- resources and personnel;
- authority and management; and
- Volunteer Organizations Active in Disasters.
Radio Ready Program
One of the initiatives that evolved from the priority for emergency public information was the Radio Ready Program, which ensures that officials can communicate with the community during an emergency even if power, phones, cell phones and the Internet are inoperable. Harris said a group of concerned citizens approached the county with the idea, and the citizens were able to work with the public-private partnership to add satellite communication equipment in county infrastructure and distribute hand-crank radios to citizens. The satellite communication equipment was installed in the county’s two emergency operations centers, multiple radio stations and a duty officer vehicle.“We serve the entire county of Santa Barbara, which is 2,700 square miles. It would be impractical to have a county radio station, so we’ve got this partnership with local media, including radio stations that have generators,” Harris said. “We now have satellite links with those radio station control rooms to help us broadcast emergency information to the community.”
Andersen said since the partnership was established in 2007, there have been five major incidents in the county that demonstrated the need for dissemination of public information. “Especially during the Gap Fire [July of 2008] there were a lot of intermittent fire outages, and a lot of people did not know to have a hand-crank radio or battery-operated radio on hand to get the information they so desperately needed,” she said.
She added that the citizens had researched what equipment the county needed for satellite communications and how to coordinate the equipment’s installation. The citizens also worked with the OES to establish the relationships with the radio stations and educated the public about the importance of having backup radios.
Advice for Future Partnerships
Harris’ advice for other local emergency agencies that are interested in partnering with private-sector and nonprofit organizations is to clearly identify goals, like the Aware & Prepare Initiative with the seven priority themes. “Even if you don’t have an Orfalea Foundations in your neighborhood or community, you can still work with your community to identify the directions that you want to go and identify the things that are worth following up on,” he said. “This creates a sense of community and direction, and when people feel like there’s some ownership they’re more likely to participate.”Andersen said the greatest lesson the foundation has learned is that it takes a lot of effort, time and trust to build a partnership. “I think local government really needs to realize that the [nongovernmental organizations], the philanthropic community, local foundations and even philanthropic individuals are really an asset to them,” she said.
[Photo courtesy of Andrea Booher/FEMA.]
