Upper Bear Creek UAC Meeting Minutes

Date: May 24 th 2005

Time: 7:30 – 8:50 PM

Location: Woodinville Water District Offices

Board Attendees: Mary Filkins, Nancy Stafford, Jerry Hicks,

County Attendees: Marissa Algeria, Major Robin Fenton and Sergeant Craig Barnes of

. the King County Sheriff’s Dept.

Community Attendees: Patti Van Lacken, Nancy Hovan

The meeting began with a discussion with the Sheriff’s officers on the use of the “911” emergency phone number. We were told that it should be used whenever we observe or hear of an unusual happening in our neighborhood. The operator answering the call will re-route our call to the appropriate agency/office. Many officers use the computers at our “store front” Community Service Office, so help is usually nearby. Our precinct has a Meth. Lab detective, Marilyn Hoyle; these labs are not as much of a problem locally as in south King Co. Ideally, there is one officer for every 1000 people; King Co has 1 officer for every 1800 residents.

Speaker: Nancy Hovan, a CERT trainer, spoke to us about Community Emergency Response Teams. This program began in Los Angeles after the World Trade Center in NYC was bombed. Woodinville has been involved with the program for 12-13 years and has 3-400 CERT trained volunteers in the area. Since the 9-11 attack, CERT has been taken over by the Dept of Homeland Security who is developing a Citizens Corps to deal with emergency fire and health issues with Disaster Preparedness in mind. There are 3800 residents for every firefighter in King County. Washington State is rated #1 of places where disasters may happen because of our volcano’s, weather, and size, and #2 because of earthquake history. She gave us the following tips in closing:

No beds under windows, glass breaks, have “light sticks” on hand to supplement flashlights because flashlights can spark explosions, keep flashlight batteries (they leak) close to but outside of flashlights, water can be kept for 5+ years in the dark, in an emergency, you have useable fresh water in your toilet tanks and hot water tanks. In case of chemical or bio warfare, stay in your house 4-5 hours to be safe. Woodinville’s remoteness to Seattle likely means emergency help would take at least 72 hours to reach us, have food and water for your family for that long or longer.