Communication is top Poway Neighborhood Emergency Corps priority

The Poway Neighborhood Emergency Corps (PNEC) has dedicated itself to making sure accurate information is passed through the community quickly during an emergency.

The volunteer group holds bi-monthly community meetings to educate Powegians about survival in an emergency, with topics ranging from preparing your home for a wildfire to sheltering in place to emergency first aid.

Their next meeting, at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 5 at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 14211 Twin Peaks Road in Poway, will focus on developing shelter in place havens in your home and what you need to do to increase your odds of surviving an emergency. The meeting will feature special guest speaker Adam Cabacungan, vice president of operations at bereadyinc.com, a disaster preparedness company with locations in Hawaii and Oceanside.

The meeting, which lasts for an hour, is free and the public is encouraged to attend.

Cabacungan will speak about new developments in sheltering in place, changes in how water is stored and saved, and the development of both a “hunker down” plan that encompasses the entire house, as well as an “on the move” plan that details evacuation plans.

The group’s call to action is “information through education through communication,” said PNEC committee member Bart Tuttle, who is the group’s emergency communications coordinator and also a licensed amateur radio, or ham, operator. “We want to teach the citizens of Poway resilience, and get the correct information out there (during an emergency).”

Terri Sorensen, another PNEC committee member and ham enthusiast, said that the group’s goal was to make people realize that they might need to survive on their own for a few days during and after an emergency. “The ultimate thought is that we want people to realize that the government is not going to instantly come in during an emergency and save them,” she said. “It may take a couple of days. We want people to be self-sufficient for at least three days.”

While educational meetings for the public are a big part of how they disseminate information about preparing for an emergency, the hams of PNEC are working to ensure that they can spread accurate information during an emergency to all neighborhoods of Poway. “It’s the dominant force in PNEC,” said Tuttle. “Put communications first, and build off of that, and go to the neighborhoods from there.”

Ham operators in the PNEC have formed the Poway Amateur Communications team, or PAC, and have established a ham radio “net” spreading from the border all the way to Santa Barbara of amateur radio enthusiasts who are willing to spread accurate information to Powegians using their ham radios.

Tuttle said that the PAC would only spread accurate information, taken from emergency services, the city or information that was confirmed to be accurate.

PNEC started investigating the use of ham radios in 2012 as emergency communication resources, said Tuttle. Working together with members from the Poway Amateur Radio Society, they have established PAC, which meets over their radios every Tuesday night to practice spreading information using the Mt. Woodson repeater. “We’re trying to get as many hams as we can to spread communication further,” said Tuttle.

The group uses a system that breaks Poway down into 60 neighborhoods, with the goal of having at least one ham radio enthusiast in each neighborhood working with them. During an emergency, the assigned ham operator will not only spread accurate information over the radio, but to his or her neighbors as well. Currently, they have about 30 neighborhoods covered.

PNEC is also working to raise enough funds to buy their own mobile communications trailer. “In an emergency, the repeater (on Mt. Woodson) would most likely be unavailable, so we’re practicing without it,” said Tuttle. The unique topography of Poway makes it difficult for ham radio signals to travel distances without a repeater, so PAC is in the process of testing good vantage points to broadcast from, he said.

One of the ways the group will be able to reliably broadcast without the repeater is if they have their own mobile communications trailer. PNEC is working with a company that built a similar trailer for the Santaluz community, Tuttle said.

One of the ways they’re planning on raising funds for the trailer is by holding an emergency safety fair in August at Old Poway Park, which will feature several experts, live training for amateur radio, water purification, food preparation, basic first aid and more.

The group is also currently looking for corporate sponsors to help them raise funds for the trailer, which will be staffed by PAC members as needed during an emergency and equipped with food, water and shelter in place items.

For more information on the PNEC and to find out what neighborhood you live in and who your emergency contact is, visit www.powaynec.com.