Very few words, today. Just a few pictures from last night's CERT field exercise that shows how citizen volunteers can "Be Ready" to cope with an extreme emergency situation, like an earthquake. I'm glad I live in a neighborhood that has four such CERT trained members on my block.

One year after it was launched as a model for helping families and neighbors to "Be Ready" for a major disaster, the Hagstrom's area of Petaluma held its first Neighborhood Emergency Preparedness Team (NERT) meeting at the Moose Lodge, last night. Over 30 people from five separate neighborhood areas gathered to participate in an orientation/planning session, facilitated by NERT team leaders, Tiffaney Renee and Jaimey Walking Bear. (Hagstrom's, Belle View, Sandalwood Estates, Oakhill/Brewster, and Westridge Knolls.) Another meeting will be held this Sunday in the Walnut Park area in hopes that a new group will join this community initiative to organize local neighborhoods in a way that will empower them to cope with emergency situations for 72 hours or longer.

Tonight, another Community Emergency Preparedness Training (CERT) class will hold its final field exercise at Fire Station #2. That will bring the total number of CERT graduates to approximately 50. Another half dozen NERTs are on the drawing board. A planning meeting, scheduled for November, will bring the NERT leaders together for a meeting as the city-wide coordinating group: ALERT (Alliance of Local Emergency Response Teams). This leadership group will then develop a blueprint of action for 2007, which will include additional CERT classes. The target goal for CERT is 100 graduates.

Any neighborhood group in Petaluma that wishes to explore the possibilities of creating at NERT for their area, should follow these steps:

#1 - Contact the Petaluma ALERT Coordinator, Bill Hammerman at 762-6593.

#2 - Attend a NERT Orientation Meeting (TBA).

#3 - Schedule a local Neighborhood Meeting to share NERT info with your neighbors.

#4 - Participate in Petaluma ALERT & NERT Leadership meetings (TBA).

#5 - Strive to become a STAR Neighborhood: Safe, Trained, Alert, & Ready.

As the Argus-Courier reported in an article on April 12, 2006, "Government can't do it all. We need to be prepared to take care of ourselves in an emergency."

Additional information is available at http://www.PetalumaNERT.org

Please remember the slogan, The greatest resource of any community is the collective wisdom, knowledge, and creativity of its citizens." Stay tuned.

Last night I told the CERT III class participants about yesterday's blog and the fact that most citizens are in denial about any pending disaster and consequently are "not ready" to cope with an emergency situation and be on their own for 72 hours or longer. Hence, today's question, "Are you ready?

Among yesterday's e-mail messages was one from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security thanking PetalumaNet for helping to make "National Preparedness Month" - September 2006 - a success. Our major readiness project was coordinating the current CERT class that will hold its final field exercise this Thursday at Fire Station #2.

Even though we will have graduated approximately 50 CERT volunteers, this is just the beginning. The PEP-C project (Petaluma Emergency Preparedness Collaboratory) is gaining momentum and becoming better known throughout Petaluma. The Hagstrom's Area is expecting about 30-35 neighbors to attend a NERT orientation meeting tonight, however, that is only about 10% of the households within their sphere of influence.How best to reach out and involve the majority of residents within a designated neighborhood is still a major challenge. What else can we do?

One alternative is to place as much emergency preparedness information online so that it may be accessed 24/7, on demand. "The U.S. Department of Homeland Security promotes individual emergency preparedness through the Ready Campaign and Citizens Corps as part of a broader national effort conducted by the Department's Preparedness Directorate. Ready is a national public service advertising campaign produced by The Advertising Council in partnership with Homeland Security. The Ready campaign is designed to educate and empower Americans to prepare for and respond to emergencies, including natural disasters and potential terrorist attacks."

Ready asks individuals to do three key things:

• Get an emergency supply kit
• Make a family emergency plan
• Be informed about the different types of emergencies that could occur and their appropriate responses

It's as simple as 1-2-3.

Watch an instructional video, online, at http://www.ready.gov/america/index.html

Taking these simple steps - now - can make a big difference in ensuring your safety, and the well-being of your family and your neighbors. Continue to read future "Emergency Preparedness" blogs for pertinent Ready information about how PEP-C activities and events can serve you. Stay tuned.

Oh, no! It's only 4:00 a.m.! Roll over and go back to sleep. "Tick, tick, tick." Don't fight it; get up and post that blog. It's way overdue. You haven't written one in almost a week. Don't lie there. Get up! Do it! OK, I'm up. Now what?

There are just too many thoughts bouncing around in my mind, again. It's just like a "ping-pong" game. Where to start is the question. Just like all the political candidates and activists who have been bounding the pavement and walking the precincts talking to folks about their particular causes, I've been "walking the walk," rather than "talking the talk" trying to achieve specific goals and objectives. Hopefully, this GLOB will bring my readers up to date on a few of my favorite community causes.

Emergency Preparedness has been taking up the majority of my waking hours with the evolution of our "Petaluma Emergency Preparedness Collaboratory" - NERT + CERT + ALERT + STAR. In order to follow the history of this cause, one should read the 22 blogs that have been posted, to date, under the following headings, on the left: Our Cyberplace (#5,6,10,15,18,19,22,41), Our Petaluma (#1,5,8), Then&Now (#4,8,9), Bill's Blog (#19,21,23,24), and Emergency Preparedness (#1,2,3), and Miscellaneous (#1).

One recent article (S.F. Chronicle, 10-18-06) titled, "Recalling disasters, cities prepare" describing the 20 year effort that East Bay communities have made, following the Loma Prieta quake in 1989 and the 1991 hills fire, included a sentence that jumped off the page, "But the biggest obstacle to prevent future disasters might be public apathy." Living in earthquake country, we may not be able to prevent a 6.0+ quake from striking our favorite river town, but we can certainly take action to "be prepared" to cope with such an event and "be ready" to help ourselves, our families and our neighbors when such a disaster happens. (And it will!) Congrats to the Hagstrom's Area neighborhood for hosting a NERT meeting at the Moose Lodge on Tuesday (10/24) at 7:30 p.m. (NERT = Neighborhood Emergency Response Team) Does your neighborhood have such a team?

Our Web-of-Life also came to mind, when another S.F. Chronicle article reported on the "Furor over YMCA plan to thin camp's forest." It appears that La Honda residents and environmentalists are demanding that a plan to thin the forest of Camp JonesGulch be halted. The irony here is that this camp site has been utilized as an "outdoor laboratory" by schools for years, in order to teach basic ecological concepts and conservation practices through "hands-on" experiences. This particular article caught my eye because this blogger was a S.F. YMCA volunteer for 25 years and served on the Camp Jones Gulch Committee from 1964-1989, and helped the camp become a year-round center for environmental, conservation, and outdoor education. In fact, my personalized license plate until a few years ago was "ECO EDUC."

Remembering Bill Soberanes was "alive and well" with the annual Whiskerino Contest on October 14^th at the Farmers' Market. Eighteen "Brothers of the Brush" stepped forward on the Walnut Park pavilion and displayed their beards, moustaches, goatees, and peach fuzz. Then, on October 19^th (Bill's 85^th birthday), the Petaluma Press Club gathered at Volpi's (in the back room, of course), to reflect on the good old days and tell BS stories. It was most enlightening for this relative newcomer to Petaluma to hear some of the tales about this legendary Argus-Courier columnist. Hmmm - I wonder if it's time to revive a column, in Bill's memory, titled - "So They Tell Me?"

Please remember that our actions speak louder than our words. It's time to get back to "walking the walk." Stay tuned.

Last Sunday, an elementary school teacher said, "It lets you know that Mother Nature is doing her thing, it was a wake up call," following the 6.7 magnitude earthquake that shook Hawaii.

My reaction - "How many wake up calls do we need?"

In my Emergency Preparedness Blog #1 (9-7-06), I stated, You might recall that in spite of wake up calls like Katrina and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, no one has given much attention to NERT - Neighborhood Emergency Response Team" training.

Earlier, this morning, I participated in a meeting of local volunteer organizations interested in disaster preparation, and guess what? Hardly anyone remembered that after the "wake up call" of 2005, the Petaluma CyberCity Roundtable initiated a process that resulted in a public forum at the Senior Center on emergency preparedness (9-21-05) or an Internet TV show that addressed the emergency communication concerns titled, "Sonoma County Disaster Readiness." It is still available 24/7, under "Special Report" at http://www.pcmg.tv

During the TV show, this blogger described the NERT model that was created by the residents Westridge Knolls. This initiative was based upon the motto that, "the greatest resource of any community is the collective wisdom, knowledge and creativity of its citizens." Since then, a local Girl Scout Troop distributed two earthquake and emergency disaster brochures to over 160 homes in the Westridge Knolls neighborhood, which had already formed seven Neighborhood Watch clusters in 1993-94 and had created an electronic Neighborhood Conference Board in 1999. In 2003, one of the neighbors graduated from a CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) training course conducted at the U.S. Coast Guard Training Center and sponsored by the Sonoma County Office of Emergency Services.

The Petaluma Argus-Courier ran a story on the front page of the Community Section (4-12-06), featuring the Westridge Knolls NERT model. Since then, Bill Paxton, a certified CERT instructor has volunteered to teach three 27-hour CERT classes involving over 50 concerned citizens. Seven neighborhood groups are in various stages of developing into NERTs, and another nine neighborhoods are on the drawing board. An amateur radio license (Technician Class) preparation session will be offered on November 11^th. In order to facilitate communication among these various neighborhood teams, a conference board and a website have been created. Check out - http://www.PetalumaNERT.org

Bottom line: although not widely known in the community, the wake up call has been heard, and another step forward will take place as a result of this morning's meeting of volunteer organizations active in disaster preparation with the formation of "Prepare Petaluma." Stay tuned.

Most political campaigns are taken up with candidate Q&A articles, flyers, and websites touting their experience, qualifications, why they are seeking office, and possibly what they hope to accomplish if elected. We, the voters, are bombarded with street signs (small, large, and huge), countless brochures via the mail, letters to the editor, and advertisements. In addition there are opportunities to see and hear the candidates at public forums and during their precinct walks. In short, a lot of time, effort and money is consumed when campaigning for a public office such as Mayor and City Council member.

We know that political advisers say that you have do all of the above to be elected. Unfortunately, much of the information that is communicated in this manner is - IMHO - huff, puff, and fluff. Our local newspapers and bloggers have carried articles and comments about the candidate's position on various community issues and concerns; however, what do we really know about their "political style?" In an effort to provide citizens with some insight into what one's candidacy is about, I posted on earlier blogs a few questions for these motivated and concerned candidates to answer.

One set of three questions were addressed by all the City Council candidates and their responses have been posted on the Petaluma Involved Neighbors (PINS) website and by another blogger at http://simpson-blogs.arguscourier.com Another set of questions was sent to the two Mayoral candidates that was designed to assess their "political style." Here is a description of four styles, using the "Assess Your Political Style" assessment scale of 10 questions developed by Dr. Kathleen Reardon, Professor of Management and Organization of Marshall School, University of Southern California.

A- The Purist believes in getting ahead through hard work alone. Declines to participate in politics and tries to get ahead by sticking to the rules. Tend to be very honest and prefer to work with other purists.

B- The Team Player believes you get ahead by working well with others and participating in politics only to advance team goals -- usually constructive forms of politics like forming alliances.

C- The Street Fighter has usually been burned or learned early that the best way to get ahead is through the use of tactics. Not at all inhibited about using politics, street fighters use more subtle forms of politics and less constructive ones when necessary. They thrive on the cut-and-thrust of business and government.

D- The Maneuverer is an individualist who believes in getting ahead by playing political games in a skillful and unobtrusive manner. The maneuverer looks for ulterior motives in others because he or she has them as well.

Dr. Readon also states, "Most people who make a career of politics are primarily street fighters or maneuverers or a combination. Of course, people with these styles are usually quite good at appearing to be team players and, at times, even purists."

I also answered the same assessment questions in order for the readers to know my"political style" bias. As I have stated in previous blogs, one's vote is based upon the "eye of the beholder." Be sure to vote on Election Day! Here is a summary of the findings. Stay tuned.