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Schwarzenegger Starts Nation's First Disaster Corps
June 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Governor Schwarzenegger today launched the first-in-the-nation Disaster Corps to professionalize, standardize and coordinate highly trained disaster volunteers statewide. Disaster Corps volunteers will be registered by their local government organization under the Disaster Service Worker Volunteer Program and will meet Disaster Corps training, typing, certification and security screening guidelines.
"California is always leading the way and now we are the first state in the nation to integrate volunteers into our state emergency plan," said Governor Schwarzenegger. "Volunteers are an incredible resource, and no state has more giving, more passionate or more dedicated volunteers than California. Together, we will take volunteerism to a whole new level and make California better prepared and better equipped than ever before, for any emergency."
In the aftermath of the 2007 Southern California Wildfires and Cosco Busan Oil Spill, thousands of disaster volunteers poured into affected areas to assist with evacuations, sheltering, clean-up and a host of other activities supporting response operations. Governor Schwarzenegger recognized the need to more effectively integrate and coordinate disaster volunteer efforts in all phases of emergency management, from disaster preparedness to disaster response and recovery. In February 2008, Governor Schwarzenegger appointed Karen Baker to serve as the state's and also the nation's first secretary of Service and Volunteering and charged her office with the development of the Disaster Corps.
"The Disaster Corps program represents an amazing collaboration between state and local government, the nonprofit and private sectors and volunteers themselves," said Secretary Karen Baker. "These volunteers represent a highly-trained resource that will ensure our first responders are supported and our communities are better prepared."
The Disaster Corps initiative was built collaboratively from the ground up through public-private partnerships and with a wide range of subject matter experts including representatives from all levels of government, local emergency managers, state agency volunteer coordinators and leaders in non-governmental volunteer programs.
As a first phase of the program, CaliforniaVolunteers awarded Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and San Francisco counties a total of $1.15 million in federal homeland security funding to support Department of Justice/FBI background checks and First Aid/CPR training for the first 1,000 members and a volunteer coordinator in each of the five counties.
"Government can't do it all by itself," said California Emergency Management Agency Secretary Matthew Bettenhausen. "Being ready for the next disaster, and ensuring an effective response, includes taking advantage of the many contributions and passion of citizens who care deeply about their communities."
In addition to the Disaster Corps, CaliforniaVolunteers today launched the Disaster Volunteer Resource Inventory, a statewide web-based IT tool to coordinate and support public, private and non-profit volunteer programs. CaliforniaVolunteers will provide secure access to the system, free of charge to Disaster Corps programs, non-governmental organizations active in disaster and local and state emergency managers. The Disaster Volunteer Resource Inventory will maintain individual contact information, as well as training history, deployment history and availability, credentialing information, language skills and other pertinent information.
To support the development of the Disaster Corps and Disaster Volunteer Resource Inventory, Deloitte LLP provided $750,000 in pro-bono consulting services, including project management, stakeholder analysis and communications support. The Home Depot Foundation has also committed nearly $60,000 for disaster-related supplies to equip Disaster Corps volunteers.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by lutan1 on
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It's so true Vic. They do handle the multi-call events well, but definitely do suffer with manpower issues. Having said that, if you use the Sydney Storms (from whichever year!!!) as an example, I reckon on that sort of scale, it'd stretch any service, regardless of uniform colour.
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Permalink Reply by Tony P on
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Nic, is the CERT you refer to Community Emergency Response Team? If so it's probably just Arnie simply being a politician - reinventing the wheel. What sort of effect it will have on the Cal CERT? who knows! Like the MRC mentioned above, This CERT is a federal government idea in the USA.
G'day Jack - "...highly trained disaster volunteers..." (which sounds like it should be firefighters)", no, I happy to be able to disagree with you on that one! On foul days, I'm very quite happy that it's the SES (State Emergency Service, well trained people) people who are outside, up on roofs, under trees, all that sort of thing.
There are often calls (usually from people who've never been involved) that the SES should be merged with my service, the CFA. Not one SES vol I've spoken to wanrts to be a firefighter, they all seem to think we're mad! And vice versa of course. Definitely not what I'm interested in volunteering for! Though we in the fire service are of course called out when the amount of damage gets out of hand - as said above by Vic and Lutan. I've also worked with SES from New South Wales in one the bad storms, I don't think we care where the help comes from.
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Permalink Reply by Sheila Stuart on
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I think this disaster corps is a great idea. I will soon be back in California. Will definitely be one of the volunteers in the disaster corps. The person that said texas has more plans in place and more and they would have more workers than victims. Obviously has not lived in Galveston County Texas within the last few years. We have lived here over 5 years and seen the disaster from two hurricanes. So many people lives are still effected due to both hurricanes. I know several dozen families that have still never recieved any help from the katrina hurricane and other people that are still in need of help from hurricane ike. Also people burned out of their homes with no place to go. The list goes on. Where is this help that you are talking about. Obviously Texas could use a program like the one california has.
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Permalink Reply by Vic Silverfish on
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That was not meant to be a dig at the SES, mate! I think they do the right thing to leverage the RFS and the NSW Brigades (paid departments) for the "big ones." They would never be able to hold enough members on their own to manage these events.
Personally, they should unify the SES and the RFS into one organisation that serves both purposes. NSw suffers from the fractured nature of it's emergency services, but that's a conversation for another time.
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I didn't take it as a dig either. And I'm 100% with you about amalgamating. Don't think it will hapen though.
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Vic & Lutan? We'll have to agree to disagree on the amalgamation between SES and fire I think ;o)
Please note that I said "usually" above. Meaning those that have not served in any way. You two are excluded from that, you know what it is like and are entitled to an educated view.
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We'll see the outcome of the Royal Commission Tony, and then see where the services head over the next few years.... ;-) I still see differing roles for members, just an amalgamated service under one banner.
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The Royal Commision will have outcomes, that is for sure. For me the best outcome would be those lawyers, the people who are making huge sums of money whilst treating everyone as criminals? I think a good place for them is the bottom of the bay.
One amalgamation that could be made to work of course is MFB/CFA - having one State fire service. Notice I don't include the DSE? Their main job is to light fires, not put them out.
I see a big problem in amalgamation of bodies with vastly different roles. After all, is there anything like a true 'amalgamation', or does it always become a takeover by the loudest talker? I've been part of 'merging' organisations, they were takeovers, no equal membership between the original organisations. (The birth of Vicroads is a classic example of that.)
Yes in theory these things can work. I'm just not happy that in practice they will. Oh well, if I really don't like the outcomes, I can always resign, can't I ;o)
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Tony,
You are correct about amalgamations usually ending up as takeovers, and I think it would be to the detriment of the NSW SES for them to lose their character to the RFS.
Heck, let them keep separate stations and their white trucks, but put them (and the RFS, and the NSWFB) under a single, unified command and control structure, the same dispatch system, and the same radio frequencies. Right now, the RFS and NSWFB determine who is the IC based on the location and nature of the incident. The SES could be worked into that mix so they still own regional disasters (like storm damage), which they do quite will.
Meh - it will never happen. I'm glad to have the SES. There was nothing similar in my home state (Maryland) back in the US.
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There can curtainly be improvements made in those areas with us in Victoria as well. Of course if any organisation is of the opinion that they have no room for improvement, they are in trouble!
At the top we all come under the same Cabinet Minister (Justice; except the ambos who come under Health). But then we have the SES using the Police comms system so we can't talk to them, and MFB and us being on different frequencies but at least there those of us that work together have radios for both networks. The MFB and us also use the same dispatch centre, the same people actually (they sometimes get their own callsign mixed...) so they understand what happens.
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Permalink Reply by Firefighter Nation WebChief on
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Since this thread is mostly about personal squabbles back and forth, it's closed.
Users: Consider this a warning that turning discussions about topics into attacks on each other over each other's views will be closed ... and users warned. If you've been warned in the past, don't be shocked if your account is terminated on subsequent instances.
Thanks
Web Chief
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The personal attacks back and forth have been removed, users involved warned, and the thread re-opened for discussion of the TOPIC.
Thanks
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