ALASKA STATE CITIZEN CORPS COUNCIL

The mission of Citizen Corps is to harness the power of every individual through education, training, and volunteer service to make communities safer, stronger, and better prepared to respond to the threats of terrorism, crime, public health issues, and disasters of all kinds.

With many of Alaska’s communities being isolated, techniques and skills learned through Citizen Corps programs may have greater and more frequent application in Alaska than in other states. 

The State Citizen Corps Council is a subcommittee of the-all-hazards State Emergency Response Commission (SERC).  The SERC Finance sub-committee decides how to allocate available grant funding for the establishment and operation of local Citizen Corps Councils, based on recommendations from the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. 

The State Citizen Corps Council chairperson, Beatrice Adler, sits on the National Disability & Emergency Preparedness Citizen Corps Working Group. Bea is convinced “that emergency preparedness education and CERT training in particular, can make the difference between a disabled individual being automatically consigned to being a victim versus a survivor, or even a hero”.  She is involved with many state-wide outreach activities and anticipates adding more local councils in the up coming year. 

Community Highlights

The Municipality of Anchorage launched the Emergency Watch program in March 2006. The Emergency Watch Program is a neighbor-led community education initiative designed to prepare neighborhoods for the reality that city services will be overextended for up to seven days after a terrorist event or natural disaster. Citizens who volunteer to be a neighborhood leader are asked to attend a two-hour orientation at the Emergency Operations Center, hold two short neighborhood planning meetings and participate in one annual exercise. All of these meetings include information about personal disaster preparation, developing a neighborhood emergency plan and practicing the neighborhood plan. Currently, we have trained over 100 neighborhood leaders and have established two neighborhood programs since the March 2006 launch of the program. 

Citizens Police Academy, Neighborhood Watch, Medical Reserve Corps, and Fire Corps programs are also offered in Anchorage.

See:  http://www.muni.org/oem/EmergencyWatch.cfm

The Kenai Peninsula Borough Citizen Corps Council has partnered with the Spruce Bark Beetle Mitigation Program to present Wildfire Protection Plan programs in Peninsula communities.  The Borough is approximately the same size as Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire combined.  CERT training is offered as well. The Kenai Citizen Council has located disaster caches in various numerous communities which have hosted, or plan to host CERT training.  Each disaster cache contains a small inventory of emergency supplies, which are available for use by CERT volunteers and emergency services personnel.

More information can be found on their website http://www.kpvolunteers.org/.

The Matanuska-Susitna Borough Council has found that by partnering with other established programs they are able to reach a wider audience and with more potential volunteers.  The Mat-Su Council has been successful in using their newly formed Volunteer Community Organizations Assisting in Disaster (VOAD) group to spread the word about CERT.  The purpose of VOAD is to organize and train members of volunteer organizations and congregations who wish to step forward as a community resource in time of disaster.  The chair is pastor of a Willow church and accordingly, thirty volunteers completed CERT training in Willow, with an additional 20 scheduled to begin training in September.  Willow has formed a CERT team and demonstrated their skills at their local Health Fair in April.  

The Mat-Su Council teamed with Alaska State Troopers and presented the Neighborhood Watch program to 135 residents of a subdivision that had been victimized frequently. The ensuing publicity promoted other neighborhoods to organize and the Neighborhood Watch Program continues to grow with subdivisions signing on rapidly.

The Mat-Su Council collaborates with the Borough’s Firewise program to integrate Firewise, CERT, Neighborhood Watch and Citizens Corps programs in presentations given to homeowner associations or other interested groups.

CERT training is a now a regular part of the Junior ROTC curriculum at Colony High and will grow to include other schools.  Future CERT classes are scheduled for Wasilla, Big Lake, Willow and Chickaloon.   CERT Train-The-Trainer has been offered twice in Mat-Su, with attendees coming from all over Alaska.

The Cordova Citizen Corps Council is composed of the Volunteer Fire Department Disaster Management Team members.  Their goal is to have all citizens participate in making their community safe and better prepared.  They are working with the City to update Cordova’s Emergency Operations Plans, and promoting increased public awareness through educational programs.  The Cordova Council supports CERT and maintains a CERT cache for members to use in the event of a disaster or emergency response.

Updated March 2008