E.P. Plan
mjensen March 13th, 2008
This is an old post that was never finished and saved in a holding place till I had it finished, well.. months later I still haven’t, so I am going to post as is, and finish it as I can, but at least it will be here in part, and you can get an idea of what EP for SF is about.
The City of Gladstone is in progress of putting an emergency preparedness plan in place for our city.It was suggested by one of our neighbors that we may want to have a plan in place for our neighborhood.
We sent out an email to invite all interested neighbors to attend a meeting hosted by Chief Grace of the Gladstone Police Department down at City Hall.
The meeting was well attended with 10 households represented and at least four others that had an interest, but were not able to make the meeting.
Chief Grace invited to sit with us as well, Tom Hogan, who works closely with Chief Grace on the Cities plans for Emergency Preparedness. He is a volunteer and has devoted a lot of time educating himself in this matter and helping our Police Chief in implementing a plan for our City.
Our meeting went for about an hour, and we started with introductions, including the Chief himself, which was fun to hear how he grew to where we have him here in Gladstone with us today. We heard from a few very experienced neighbors, that had worked in this area through work, and one who had first hand knowledge of experiencing an emergency evacuation of an area. A lot of good knowledge was shared.
Chief Grace shared with us what there plans were and what they are working on at the City level. He also gave us information packets to help us design our own plan. He invited us to keep him included on our progress and use him as a resource as we build our own plan. Thank you Chief Grace and Tom Hogan!
Tom Hogan was a wealth of knowledge. He spent some time sharing with us what sort of disasters we were possibly preparing ourselves for. Things I had never thought of…. now, I am a bit of a naysayer, I don’t like to spend time worrying about things of this nature, but I tell you what, there is nothing wrong with spending a little time upfront to prepare for an event… jut in case. Your really going to feel silly (actually- looking silly- would be the least of your concerns) if something does affect us, and your not prepared. It really would not take much time to prepare, at least to include yourself in a network of caring neighbors. So the information from Tom was very informative. He talked with us in more detail about how the City of Gladstone was preparing and invited anyone interested to volunteer to help in Gladstones E.O.C. ”Emergency Operations Center”. They are working towards having facility and staff/ volunteers to help in aiding those affected. Anyone can volunteer to help, but they would especially be interested in having those with medical knowledge – ie: nurses, doctors, etc..
CERT training focuses on increasing the level of safety for those who will be stepping forward to assist after a disaster.
CERT promotes a partnership between emergency services and personnel & their resources may be overwhelmed – CERT training provides a glimpse into the “system” designed to save lives.
If you would like more information on Gladstones EP plan, E.O.C. you can read more on the Gladstone Police’s we site at
(in progress of finishing this, but I can see I dropped the ball getting this posted, so this is months later and still not finished, I am going to post as is and finish working on it as I can. At least you can have an idea of where we are at in regards to an EP plan, and an idea of what it is all about)
mjensenon 22 Jan 2008 at 2:03 pm edit this
Okay we have a date and time for our first meeting.
Sounds so official, but really it will be just getting together to move forward on determining what an EP plan will look like for Sherwood Forest, and how might each contribute to the efforts. All are welcome and encouraged to come. The more of us involved the better.
Monday night -February 18th at 6pm – right now as it stands we will be meeting at Gladstone’s City Hall downtown Gladstone (on Portland Ave. right near the library).
Please, please, I would encourage you to come join us if you possibly can. If you show up and decide it is not something you would be interested in or able to do at this time, no hard feelings. But even if you are only able to be in on the planning/organization part of it, that would be great.
# marysack433on 24 Jan 2008 at 12:24 pm edit this
I’ll try to come to this meeting too. Anyone willing to do some calling to remind those of us that forget? Maybe we could car pool.