Volunteers learn how to set up disaster shelters
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Volunteers from Twain Harte and Groveland and Tuolumne County government employees worked with the Gold Country Region American Red Cross on Thursday to learn how to set up and take down temporary shelters for displaced residents and other evacuees, to prepare for the Sonora area’s next disaster.
Preparation for the next emergency situation is key, Dore Beitz, with the county Office of Emergency Services, and Aimee New, the Sonora City Fire chief, said during set-up and take-down drills staged at the county Enrichment Center, a Behavioral Health facility run by the county’s Health and Human Services department.
“We appreciate all the volunteers in Tuolumne County taking time to come out and train,” New said outside the Enrichment Center. “They’re training to be ready when we need their help.”
Volunteers at the drill included members of the Twain Harte Area and Groveland Area community emergency response teams (CERT). They and others learned from Beitz and Debbie Calcote with the Gold Country Region American Red Cross that the key to shelter setup and take-down the American Red Cross way are American Red Cross trailers, pre-filled with everything needed to open a temporary disaster shelter.
It takes a minimum of five people to set up one temporary disaster shelter, Calcote said.
Carolee White with the American Red Cross emphasized that one of the first things necessary to set up at a temporary shelter are tables out front and registration materials to keep track of everyone trying to get inside a newly opened temporary shelter.
“Registration is going to be the very first thing you set up,” White said. “Nobody gets past us. You’re like a watchdog. Once you have registration set up and wristbands on people, then you work on snacks and dormitory.”
Registration at temporary disaster shelters is essential, because it can
help authorities track down survivors of a recent disaster if there are fatalities or if individuals are missing for other reasons. Boxes labeled for registration set-up appeared to contain the most paperwork.
Calcote divided volunteers and county employees into smaller groups to learn registration, feeding, and dormitory setup procedures, as well as a set-up drill for health services and more paperwork.
Setting up snacks and feed stations is basic. Most containers that came out of the Red Cross trailer for feeding contained snacks, cookies, sandwich fixings, and bottled water.
Dormitory set-up amounted to putting together folding cots that occupied a significant portion of the Red Cross trailer at Thursday’s drill. Steve Boyack, assistant health and human services director for Tuolumne County, looked like he’d had practice, and he encouraged others on how to set cots up and take them down.
The simulation drill Thursday was intended to get volunteers and county staff — anyone who could be called on to open a shelter during an emergency — familiar with all the details of unloading equipment from a Red Cross trailer, setting up everything that’s needed, learning to manage registration, feeding, dormitory, and health services at a shelter, and then closing down a shelter.
Another vital aspect of the drill Thursday, Beitz said, was getting individuals communicating and working together, for both response and sheltering, if necessary.