News |Northshore Emergency Management Coalition

News

General Outreach

NEMCo provides a variety of outreach activities during the year. These include public workshops on disaster preparedness, participation in community events, and training in CERT and in ham radio license preparation.

NEMCO Newsletter Summer 2019.png

Newsletters

NEMCo periodically publishes newsletters to showcase activities, events, tips and tricks, and training, and to provide a spotlight on volunteers and their contributions.

Summer 2019 Newsletter (PDF)

Fall 2019 Newsletter (PDF)

Index to Newsletters (PDF)

Program Flyers for 2020

General NEMCo information

News - The Seattle Times

As police and firefighter numbers fall, officials urge prep

Sep. 22, 2019 at 7:49 am Updated Sep. 22, 2019 at 9:09 pm

By JAKE GOODRICK, BRIGETTE WALTERMIRE, NATALIE ANDERSON and CHRISTIAN GRAVIUS

The Associated Press

CARSON, Calif. (AP) — With natural disasters increasing in frequency and intensity, first responders are finding it more difficult to reach and rescue the thousands of victims of floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires.

Throughout the country, many emergency units have fewer people to navigate disaster response, meaning they have to do more with less.

“So even if you were the slickest agency in the world, and you dealt with disasters all the time … if you train every day, a disaster is still called a disaster for a reason,” said Amy Donahue, a professor in the department of public policy at the University of Connecticut. “Even if you devoted all of your resources to these rare events, you still would find yourself struggling to manage them.” To read more, Click Here.

News - TEEN CERT

By R. McKenzie, volunteer with NEMCo (9/20/2019)

Class enrollment is closed, watch for future offerings.

On September 9, 2019 Teen CERT started with 29 students from Bothell High School, Inglemore High School, NorthCreek High School, Woodinville High School, Kenmore Middle School, NorthShore Middle School, and a couple of students from private and home schools. Several parents stayed for the entire first night to observe. They commented that the class was outstanding and they wanted to join!

On the second night of class, students learned about fire safety and utility controls. They did hands-on training on how to safely turn off the gas, water and electricity utilities. In addition, they learned how to conduct a size-up for a fire emergency, understood safety precautions, and how to put out a small fire. The most fun for all was using the fire hose.

Teen CERT training teaches students about the potential disasters that could affect this area and how to safely and responsibly respond to them. Through Teen CERT, students can serve the community and help take care of their school and home. Students fulfill 24 hours of Community Service Hours towards graduation and college applications.

The students meet every Monday night, concluding with a CERT simulated disaster exercise on October 26th at Fire Station 51. Our students are going to be prepared for a disaster! Want more information about TEEN CERT, Click Here.

TEEN CERT 2019

Teen CERT on Fire Hose

News - Aviation DART

On April 27, 2019 NEMCo volunteers participated in the general aviation Disaster Airlift Response Teams (DART) drill at Kenmore Air assisting with patient transport and food delivery. Seaplanes from the Washington Seaplane Pilots Assocation DART group flew about 1,300 pounds of supplies from Renton Field to Kenmore Air for final ground transport to Mary's Place, a women's shelter.

NEMCo provided ham radio support to this event at the Kenmore Air location. Three NEMCo operators set up a canopy with the ham station where 70cm ham bands were used and commercial airplane frequencies were monitored. This drill was conducted with handheld radios since that would be a realistic “real event” scenario, at least in the early hours. In a test done for the Spring Fifth Saturday Drill it was determined that communications to the PSE repeater on Rattlesnake Mountain (441.770) were effective from the street level outside of Kenmore Air. Read more in our Summer Newsletter (PDF).