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	BayNET Support for Community Preparedness Efforts Carrie Barnecut Office of Emergency Services, Oakland Fire Department Law enforcement, fire suppression and emergency service agencies across the country are espousing the concept of community preparedness. Many have established neighborhood emergency team (NET) training programs. In California’s Bay Area, NET program coordinators have formed a network for
resource sharing and education. This consortium is called BayNET (Bay Area Neighborhood Emergency Training). While the logistics of the NET programs differ from agency to agency, they all promote the same concept; neighbor taking care of neighbor in times of disasters. Residents who participate in the NET program understand that they will have to rely on each other during a disastrous event because emergency response will be inadequate. There will be more problems in the 72 hours following the event than there will be resources to deal with the problems. Neighborhood emergency team training programs teach residents how to organize their neighbors for response and to communicate among themselves and with their local jurisdiction. Residents learn how to assess damage and perform light search and rescue. They are taught triage and disaster medical skills. BayNET provides a vehicle to enhance neighborhood emergency training. BayNET day-long quarterly meetings are workshops focused on the improvement and continuity of existing programs and the startup of new programs. During its five-year existence, NET program coordinators have learned about crisis communication and exercise design. They have problem-solved what to tell participants about earthquake insurance, how to better promote disaster preparedness, and how to provide worker’s compensation coverage for team members. Program coordinators learned from peers how to incorporate psychological first aid and pet preparedness into their existing programs.
	Recently, panels of experts have helped members include community sheltering as well as neighbors with disabilities and special needs in their planning and training. BayNET developed "neighborhood challenge" educational activities to address the Year 2000 preparedness issue. Future topics include partnering with neighborhood schools and interfacing with the emergency medical system.
BayNET has a mailing list of 180, representing over 100 agencies. Those members who are able to take advantage of BayNET workshops sincerely appreciate the opportunity to share information and benefit from the mutual support of their counterparts. Many NET programs within the Bay Area are state-of-the-art programs, which is in part because of the BayNET collaboration for resource sharing and education. BayNET was begun through the efforts of Frank Lucier, San Francisco Fire Department, and Chris Wimmer from Chevron Corporation. BayNET receives in-kind fiscal support from Chevron and program support from the Governor’s Office of Emergency Service, Coastal Region. For more information about BayNET or neighborhood emergency training programs, please contact Carrie Barnecut by email at Carrie_Barnecut/OES@oes.ca.gov.

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