SILVERDALE – Should a catastrophic earthquake or flood affect Central Kitsap, the key to managing the chaos is to know who your neighbors are.

That according to Mike Gordon, director of the Kitsap County Department of Emergency Management.

“It’s really about knowing who in your community has first aid training,” Gordon said.

“Who are the doctors, who are the nurses? Who’s got the chainsaw in the neighborhood? Who’s got homes with generators on them so we can all get together as neighbors and all respond together as a community and take care of ourselves,” at least until first responders are freed up from dealing with the highest priority problems.

Gordon spoke to the Central Kitsap Community Council on Jan. 22.

KCDEM’s goals are twofold: The first is to help prepare communities for disasters by helping businesses, residents and schools map their neighborhoods to find out who their neighbors are.

The second is to appropriately handle a response, including setting up an emergency management command, communicating with the public and maintaining situational awareness of what is going on and what the priorities are.

Being prepared at both work and home was one way to deal with the threat of a major earthquake.

“It’s not about that doom and gloom, it’s really about where you are in that event. Make sure your family is taken care of.”

• Volunteers keep Kitsap County Department of Emergency Management ready

KCDEM is co-located at the 911 CENCOM building in Bremerton, next to the National Guard. KCDEM reports to city and county government.

“We’re not FEMA,” Gordon said, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “We’re county employees.” Gordon said a lot of people didn’t even know KCDEM existed.

KCDEM has only four employees but has 400 volunteers, including search and rescue personnel. Gordon said the county had 1,200 ham radio operators, 200 of which volunteer for KCDEM. The ham operators could provide the “lowest level of effective communication in Kitsap County when everything else goes away,” Gordon said.

“If you think your cell systems and if you think your phone systems are going to make it through a catastrophic earthquake … probably not.

“We try to use that redundancy to make sure we have levels of communication so that we can effectively communicate to the public.”

If the county were overwhelmed, then outside help could be brought in. KCDEM also participates in exercises with the Navy.

“I guess people are particularly concerned about radiological events in Kitsap County. In fact, we just went through the last couple of years with doing a number of small exercises. As well as a four-day event with them on a (simulated) terrorism radiological event over at the sub base.”

“Ever since probably 9/11 the armed forces have taken the role of emergency management more seriously.

“They have a role and responsibility; obviously number one would be to protect national assets, whatever that might be. And their second role is to make sure that the sailors as well as their families that are living on the bases are also taken care of.”

In the event of a disaster, KCDEM has authority from the commissioners and mayors to activate the Emergency Operations Center as necessary to save lives.

FEMA wouldn’t come to the county unless requested. For that to happen, the county would declare an emergency, then the governor would follow, then the president could declare an emergency and activate appropriate departments.

• Managing the emergency

Gordon said that since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the nation has changed the way it responds by using what is called the National Incident Management System.

“Every organization that responds to disasters, whether it’s the fire chief at a fire or it’s a police officer running to the scene of a shooting, we all use the same comprehensive system in order to manage events.

“When a firefighter walks off his truck, he establishes command and he responds to that event through a managed system.”

Since it’s a national standard, additional personnel from outside of the county or state can be brought in to help, and they’ll be familiar with the system.

“If we all do things differently we can’t help each other.”

• Preparing buildings for a quake

Prepping a home for a quake is one step that may be taken.

“Wood structures are generally in pretty good shape during disasters,” Gordon said. But unreinforced masonry, especially in Bremerton, can be a problem.

“A lot of homes in the Bremerton area actually have pre-1940 codes that were built during WWII in order to facilitate the war and those homes may not have been retrofitted over the years (and) will easily slide off foundations or collapse during disasters. Those are the type of things we want to go look at from a retrofit perspective in order to better withstand those homes during an earthquake.”

Building codes and soil analysis were another way of making buildings more capable of surviving a quake.

• Teachers will be responsible for kids in a quake

Teacher training is essential, and KCDEM does exercises with schools. A large quake could make Kitsap’s streets unpassable. Parents of school children may be unable to reach their children, and that means it will be up to teachers to take care of them.

“We train them to take care of children in disasters,” Gordon said.

“You can imagine yourself in an earthquake when you have 20,000 students standing on the grass throughout Kitsap County waiting to find out whether or not the building is safe to go back into.”

Parents could ask teachers what their plan is for dealing with a major problem.

• Militias

During a 2007 flood, Gordon said “I had a group that called me up that wanted to know when we were going to start militias.”

That comment piqued the interest of CKCC council member Rob MacDermid.

“You just raised an interesting point when you talk about the militia,” MacDermid said. “How do you deal with that, the law enforcement issue? Because I imagine you have this county in chaos and all of the sudden a lot of guys who have been waiting for their great big opportunity are going to be coming out of the woodwork with their guns. And it could be scary. I would imagine it would be an all-hands-on-deck for all local law enforcement including state patrol. How quick can the National Guard be mobilized to come in and assist?”

Gordon replied, “I think we’re fortunate in that we do have two National Guards centered in Kitsap County.” Gordon said they would have to work with the sheriff’s office and county commissioners and establish a curfew and good communication with the public.

“Don’t be roaming around the streets at night. Just being smart about it. That may be the best thing we can do for the first couple of days.”

• Specific transportation plans not possible

It was difficult to make a specific emergency transportation plan or emergency shelter plan for disasters because no one would know which roads or buildings would be usable until after a disaster takes place.

Subduction zone quakes are “so large and so mean” that a perfect plan could not be developed. The best that could be done would be to have  good situational awareness. Two areas of command could be set up if a quake were to create a large rift that split the county in two halves.

Gorst is an “achilles heel,” Gordon said. He said that ferries, busses and parking lots could be used to move people around Gorst during emergencies.

Gordon said his role was to ensure that “life lines” were available afterward to get people to hospitals or triage areas.

“You can imagine: During catastrophic earthquakes, if you were hurt and you couldn’t get to Harrison, where would you go? Well more than likely you could go to your local clinic … most people are going to find their way.”

During catastrophic events, only limited firefighting and emergency services would be available. Emergency personnel would be directed to areas that were most affected by the disaster in order to save lives.

“So we may have a lot of walking wounded. We may have people with broken bones or hurt, but they may not be the biggest priority at that time.”

Gordon said that it would be important to have a good situational awareness of what was going wrong in order to best allocate resources.

Learn more about KCDEM online at http://www.kitsapdem.org.