Noah was prepared. Are you? Gig Harbor Maritime Parade float designers for PEP-C Tonya and Don Lee
[photo courtesy of JoAnne Gray]
Peninsulas Emergency Preparedness Committee Meeting Minutes
4 June 2001
Presiding / Conducting: Dave Watson, General Chair
MEMBERS IN ATTENDANCE:
Board of Directors: Hugh McMillan, Marv Nauman, Bob Jardin, Gretchen Wilbert, Joseph Jones
Committee Members: JoAnne Gray, Dave & Sue Watson, Marsh Allen, Sue Gillmore, Don Lee, Tonya Lee, Candy Anderson, Fred & Mary Ramsdell, Colleen Franz, Ray Zimmerman
Excused: Keith Stiles, Mark Yordy
REPORTS
Minutes 5 March 2001 meeting: Approved
Treasurer’s Report (Colleen Franz): Approved
Committees
1. PARET: JoAnne Gray for Mark Yordy (not in attendance) We have recently experienced in increase in interest in ham radio and PARET. We’ve had record numbers, as high as 30 so far, of check-ins on our weekly radio net. We are also looking forward to this year’s Field Day coming up June 23-24. Field Day is the amateur radio world’s largest annual event. It’s focus is practicing emergency field operations and raising local awareness of amateur radio emergency services.
We will be operating from Volunteer Park about 4 miles south of Key Center on the Key Peninsula highway beginning at 11 a.m. on June 23rd and concluding at 11 a.m. on June 24th – 24 hours of radio mania!! Support for our effort has been enthusiastic both from public service and the ham/private sectors. The public is invited and welcome. For more information, contact Mark Yordy (253) 853-5123 or email: KC7BBO@juno.com
2. Webmaster: Sue Gillmore
Sue has acquired a new domain (www.at-home-emergency-preparedness.org) for purposes of positioning the PEP-C website on the search engines and directories. Because we are a non-profit organization we will be able to submit to the directories free of charge. This will save us $400. Most of the search engine queries are currently generated through Yahoo and the Open Directory group feeds information to a number of other top search engines. Submitting our website will take about 3 weeks. Getting indexed in the search engines will take anywhere from a few days to a few months after we submit.
In selecting the keyword phrases for positioning our website, Sue did some research to find out what words people have been using over the last three months to find emergency preparedness information. No one is looking locally – for Gig Harbor emergency preparedness or earthquake information. We could easily get top search engine positions for keyword phrases that include local terms such as Gig Harbor or Key Peninsula. But no one is searching with those phrases. Sue has therefore targeted about a dozen keyword phrases that are very popular on the search engines. Joseph Jones suggested that we use local terms to narrow the focus of the website so that it serves primarily the Gig Harbor and Key Peninsula residents. We can do this and we can get top positions on the search engines for those keyword phrases, but in the last three months, no one has used any of those phrases in searching for emergency or earthquake preparedness information. It is unlikely that such keyword phrases would serve us or the community very well.
Sue has removed all references on the website to community preparedness pages because no one has submitted that information to her. When it gets submitted, those pages will be uploaded again. She sent out emails to several members of the committee in March requesting information for the website but has not received anything to date from them.
3. Training: Gig Harbor Mayor, Gretchen Wilbert
Pierce County has adopted the SPAN program as their neighborhood program and has hired Jodi Woodcock to focus on neighborhood training. The City of Gig Harbor will contact Jodi to see what the County plans on doing within the City limits for the money that the city pays them annually. Mayor Wilbert asked the committee to identify the neighborhoods that PEP-C has worked with so far. The response indicated that the committee has not trained any neighborhoods to date because of conflicts with Pierce County jurisdiction. Mayor Wilbert suggested that PEP-C invite Pierce County personnel to a committee meeting to update the committee on their plans. It was suggested that a one on one meeting with Jodi Woodcock might be more productive and less intimidating. It was decided that Mayor Wilbert will initiate contact with Jodi Woodcock and arrange for her to meet with Candy Anderson, JoAnne Gray and both Don and Tonya Lee. It would be good to bring Jodi up to speed on what PEP-C has done and how PEP-C can be of service to county residents as well as a resource for information on individual and family preparedness.
Candy Anderson: No training meetings have transpired since the last meeting, but JoAnne Gray did speak at the local Women’s Republican meeting and met with World Vision people. On March 28th, Marv Nauman and JoAnne Gray attended a Fox Island Association meeting with the expectation of giving a brief introduction to PEP-C and preparedness. Wanda, from Pierce County, however, took most of the hour and discussed exclusively the disaster threat. On April 16 Fred and Mary Ramsdell gave a preparedness presentation at Peninsula Light. Most of the registrants showed up and the meeting was well attended. The Health and Safety Expo on April 7th gave us some good exposure. Unfortunately, it was very cold that day and we suffered from insufficient publicity.
Candy proposed that until the neighborhood training issue is resolved with Pierce County, we focus on smaller groups and promote Block Party presentations. We could team up with Neighborhood Watch groups and meet in a home for coffee and dessert with a brief presentation on preparedness. This would be a good way to promote water barrel sales, too. It was proposed that we schedule a training seminar on Tuesday, July 24, 2001 from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. to help presenters put together a presentation.
4. Water Barrels: Marsh Allen and Don Lee
Sales have continued to decline. The current barrel sale location at Haven of Rest Cemetery is tough for people to get to. Don proposed that we move to a higher traffic location such as the Farmer’s Market. Those who have been staffing the barrel sales at Haven of Rest are getting burned out wasting their time for insignificant sales. If we set up at the Farmer’s Market we will need to purchase a trailer for transporting the barrels from the storage location to the Farmer’s Market location. A motion was placed before the committee to spend up to $600 on a medium sized trailer for transporting 15-20 barrels at a time. Motion was seconded and passed by the committee. We will continue to limit barrel sales to the 3rd Saturday of every month. Watsons and Lees will staff the June 16th sale; Marsh Allen and Joseph Jones will staff the July 21st sale; Hugh McMillan and Don Lee will staff the August sale.
Don added that there has been considerable interest in rain barrels and will look into spickets. The committee approved $220 for supplies to make rain gutter spickets to sell with our barrels.
5. P.I.O.: Hugh McMillan
The Editor at the Gateway Newspaper continues to be difficult to work with and is not supportive of our organization. Another contact at the Gateway, Shirley, has agreed to be our media contact and make sure that our notices get published in the paper. JoAnne recently submitted our PEP-C committee meeting notice and it was indeed published. It has been about 1 ½ years since the paper has published any of our notices.
Anyone with news or information to publish to the general public should contact Hugh and he’ll get it to the local newspapers.
6. KGHP: Hugh McMillan for Keith Stiles (not in attendance)
KGHP continues with its program of teaching, general upgrading, and operation as a publicly owned radio station. Our most recent major activity was coverage of the Gig Harbor Maritime Parade on June 2, and the “Blessing of the Fleet” in Gig Harbor on June 3. We are now ending our first year of our two year Grant Program from the US Department of Education for the development of curriculum for high schools that may be used throughout the country. Since the last PEP-C meeting, we have moved one of our translators (89.3 Mhz) that used to be at the Old Harbor Heights Elementary School over to Fox Island, as our news translator on 104.5 is doing such an excellent job.
The recent earthquake showed that one of our equipment racks was too tall and too top heavy to be really safe, so that rack has been replaced. Our signal now is in the form of “partial stereo” which represents an advance over our previous monaural signal. We have recently acquired a brand new, state of the art Emergency Alert System (EAS) receiver, which is a major upgrade for notification of all kinds of emergencies including national, local and weather related events. This new receiver replaces three pieces of donated consumer equipment that worked but were subject to problems if there were power interruptions. This improvement was made possible through a gift from the Key Center Angel Guild.
We are continuing to improve our studio facilities, and it seems well within the range of possibilities that we shall have full unattended (automation) operation on a 24 hour, 7 day/week ability before the end of this coming summer season.
7. Fire 16: Fred Ramsdell
No news to report other than Fire Station #2 will be setting up a ham radio station for the Field Day Event June 23-24.
8. Fire 5: Bob Black (not in attendance)
9. Peninsula School District: Dave Watson
Training will continue through the summer for custodians and new Principals and will include ATC-20 training (authorizing re-entry of a building after an earthquake).
10. Gig Harbor Maritime Parade
Parade participants reported a good public response to the PEP-C float, llamas and Mr. and Mrs. Noah. Thanks you to all who helped, especially Don and Tonya Lee for putting it all together. Official Thank You notes should be sent to those who supplied the trailer, the boat, the llamas and the costumes. Dave Watson agreed to send those out to people.
11. Health Fair
The Gateway let us down big time in terms of publicity for PEP-C’s participation. Overall, however, those who attended were most interest in the free health screening tests that were available rather than the information booths. The question was raised as to whether PEP-C will participate next year in the Fair. Discussion was deferred to a future meeting.
12. Partners in Emergency Preparedness Conference: Marv Nauman, Bob Jardin, Sue Gillmore
Marv reported that the Light Urban Search and Rescue Presenters will come and train us, but we need to go through the appropriate local channels to schedule them. Overall the Conference seminars were interesting, proposed numerous tips and disseminated much valuable information. Bob Jardin brought back a lot of literature to share and made it available to interested committee members. Sue Gillmore did not report.
CALENDAR & NEW BUISNIESS
1. Elections:
The Treasurer’s Seat was made available by Colleen Franz. Duties include balancing the checkbook, doing quarterly reports, deal with IRS paperwork and rendezvous with authorized members to obtain a second signature on a check. This last duty being the most difficult of all. There were no nominations and no interest expressed in this office. Colleen indicated that she is very willing to continue as the Treasurer as long as the committee does not require additional services than what was outlined. Colleen was nominated for re-election as Treasurer; the nomination was seconded and approved by the committee. Committee Officers and their terms stand as follows:
General Chair: Dave Watson (2003)
Vice Chair: JoAnne Gray (2001)
Secretary: Sue Gillmore (2003)
Treasurer: Colleen Franz (2004)
The PEP-C Board of Directors can have as many as 9 members according to the By-Laws. Current members of the Board of Directors and their terms include:
Marv Nauman (2003)
Gretchen Wilbert (2003)
Bob Jardin (2003)
Joseph Jones (2002)
Hugh McMillan (2001) (2004)
Hugh McMillan was nominated for re-election to the Board. The nomination was seconded and approved by the committee. It was proposed that two more members be elected to the Board. Don Lee and Fred Ramsdell were both nominated. The nominations were seconded and approved by the committee. Don Lee will fill seat #6 (2004) and Fred Ramsdell will fill seat #7 (2004).
2. Discussion and ideas for increasing PEP-C membership deferred from the March meeting was not discussed.
3. Discussion of new jobs and tasks was deferred to the October 2001 meeting.
ADJOURNMENT – 7:40 p.m.
NEXT MEETING
Date: Monday, 15 October 2001 (not the first Monday)
Time: 5:30 for BOD / 6 p.m. for Committee
Location: EOC in Gig Harbor
Agenda: send items for discussion to JoAnne Gray or Dave Watson
