VashonBePrepared Celebrates 6th Anniversary with Community Summit

VashonBePrepared Community Summit

Leaders from the Vashon community came together for the first VashonBePrepared Community Summit Saturday morning at Chautauqua School. Moderated by President Rick Wallace and Vice-President Bob Smueles, the group brainstormed for over 3 hours on current  community need if a disaster were to befall us.

Specifically the group looked at the question:

“What does Vashon need to prepare, survive and recover from a major incident that impacts the entire community?”

After generating well over 50 broad and specific topics that need addressing the group culled the priority items down to the following:

• Encourage households to prepare (25 votes)
• Public Buy-in (Education & Understanding) (18)
• Volunteers (Organization) (14)
• Public Information (via public media such as Beachcomber & Voice of Vashon) (12)
• Medical Center & Field Hospital (12)
• Shelter (10)
• Food for People (10)
• Boats (10)
• Roads (9)
• Psychological Motivation (9)
• Business Recovery Planning (6)
• Search & Rescue (2)

Participants then volunteered to work on solutions to resolve these issues in the coming year as part of a new Marketing Campaign Task Force.

VashonBePrepared 6th Annual Meeting

After getting a reading from the community on the current state of gaps in community resilience, President Rick Wallace discussed VashonBePrepared highlights over the last year or so:

Historic Community Summit: Began a new tradition, an annual community gathering to agree on preparedness priorities and to form community partnerships for action.

VIFR Agreement: Formalized years of work with a Service Agreement adopted between Vashon Island Fire & Rescue and VashonBePrepared.

New Mission Statement: Adopted new mission statement in our bylaws: VashonBePrepared is a community nonprofit organization of neighbors helping neighbors to prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters or other emergencies.

Regional Earthquake Exercise: Participated in regional Evergreen Earthquake Exercise. Planned and executed Operation Lifeline test with King County Water Taxi. Involved more than fifty volunteers working over the course of two days. Visited by more than a dozen Island businesses.

Voice of Vashon: Expanded emergency alert system capabilities. Now merged into the Emergency Operations Center as Public Information staff. Major upgrades to standby electricity and completion of flashing light system. New website to stream and post text of bulletins. Applying for community FM radio license to increase coverage.

Regional Hazard Mitigation Plan: Giving Vashon a voice and supporting VIFR through membership of Steering Committee for the Regional Hazard Mitigation Plan, a future source for federal grants.

Community Shelter, Food and Water: Formalized new partnerships with Granny’s Attic for staffing shelters and Food Bank for staffing community food and water distribution.

Medical Reserve Corps: Applied for and received federal grant from National Association of City and County Health Officers.

Registered Emergency Workers: Implemented state emergency worker protection for members of the Emergency Operations Center Team.

Preparedness Training Examples: First Red Cross shelter training on Vashon for many years with major participation by Granny’s Attic volunteers. Community Emergency Response Team new recruit class, quarterly refreshers. Joint CERT/ARES search and rescue exercise in Center Forest. Amateur radio license training for CERT volunteers with 15 new Hams licensed. Monthly Emergency Operations Center drill nights.

Treasurer Donna Donnelly provided a financial report. VashonBePrepared finally has several stable funding sources and continues to run with minimal expenses – primarily organizational insurance.

The meeting concluded by recognizing outgoing board members Jill Janow – who has been very active with VashonBePrepared from its founding some 6 years ago and John ‘Oz” Osborne. New board members Luke McQuillin and Toni Doane were welcomed. The new board and officers were approved by acclamation.

VashonBePrepared Officers & Executive Committee 2013-2014

Rick Wallace, President
Ed Steyh, Vice-President
Catherine Rogers, Secretary
Donna Donnelly, Treasurer
Tim Johnson, At-large
Debi Richards, At-large

VashonBePrepared 2013-2014 Board of Directors

John Cornelison (past Prez)
Toni Doane (at-large)
Donna Donnelly (at-large)
Synthia Downs (at-large)
Tim Johnson (at-large)
Vacant (VIFR)
Daniel Luechtefeld (ARES)
Luke McQuillin (EOC Team)
Scott Rice (CERT)
Debi Richards (NERO)
Catherine Rogers (VEPC)
Bob Smueles (at-large)
Ed Steyh (EOC Team)
Rex Stratton (VIEMA)
Rick Wallace (EOC Team)