Emergency Preparedness, Disaster Response, and Community Resilience

Maintain a Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan that outlines the City’s responsibilities and procedures in an emergency. Ensure the plan integrates needed coordination between the City and neighborhood groups, schools, churches, businesses, and hotels. 

Coordinate with partner agencies—such as neighboring cities, schools and colleges, businesses, and community organizations—and residents and neighborhoods to conduct emergency and disaster preparedness exercises that test emergency response plans. 

Provide public education for individuals, schools, and community groups to promote citizen awareness and preparedness for self-action in case of a major disaster or emergency. 

Encourage all residents and businesses to prepare and maintain emergency kits with enough supplies to be self-sufficient for three to seven days. Support establishing emergency caches at the neighborhood and business level by partnering with community organizations pursuing funding. 

Maintain a volunteer-based Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) and related emergency response training programs, and ongoing refresher exercises. Establish and maintain a communication and deployment plan for CERTs during a disaster and align the plan with neighborhood communication plans. 

Develop, maintain, and implement a citywide Energy Assurance Plan that documents the energy needs of critical City and community facilities and functions, establishes goals and actions to increase energy resiliency during disasters, and prioritizes the use of renewable energy or other sustainable technologies to reduce dependency on the grid during power outages. 

Participate in mutual aid agreements to ensure adequate resources, facilities, and other support for emergency response. 

Coordinate with the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board (Caltrain) and the California High Speed Rail Authority to ensure that new train services, including electrification and higher speeds, do not result in overburdened safety risks to the community both in terms of infrastructure and access (e.g., rail street crossing closures). 

Obtain, maintain, and regularly upgrade a mass communications system to effectively notify people during disasters and emergencies by using current communication technologies. 

Support a Community Risk and Resiliency position that would be responsible for:

• Leading community engagement and education about safety, disaster preparation and resilience;
• Bringing stakeholders together, including HAM radio operators, CERT, the Burlingame Neighborhood Network, the Central County Fire Department, Burlingame Police Department, the City Manager, and the City Council to build a vision, plan and establish goals to increase the City’s resilience to emergencies;
• Bringing best regional, state and national practices to Burlingame; and
• Developing recommendations to mitigate identified risks. 

Publish and promote emergency preparedness activities and drills. Use the City’s social media accountsand website to provide safety tips that may include identifying and correcting household hazards, knowing how and when to turn off utilities, helping family members protect themselves during and after an earthquake, recommending neighborhood preparation activities, and advising residents to maintain an emergency supply kit containing first-aid supplies, food, drinking water, and battery- operated radios and flashlights. 

Participate in Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training and offer training to help neighborhood groups care for themselves during disasters. To this end, partner with the Burlingame Neighborhood Network (BNN) to assist with neighborhood drills and safety exercises to increase participation and build community support. 

Support the Burlingame Neighborhood Network (BNN), a citizen-led network to support City safety officers in the event of a natural or human-made catastrophe. 

Coordinate with State agencies that oversee facilities for persons with disabilities, and those with access and functional needs, to ensure that such facilities conform to all health and safety requirements, including emergency planning, training, exercises, and employee education. 

Obtain translated emergency preparedness materials and make them available to appropriate foreign language populations.