What have Portland NETS been doing during the pandemic, both neighborhood and city-wide? Lots of useful community activities as it turns out. Neighborhood Emergency Team (aka NETs) volunteers:
* are being deployed as wayfinders and traffic control support at vaccination clinics around Portland and further,
* continue to connect in their micro neighborhoods with neighbors on emergency preparedness, and
* have worked at our local ECC (Emergency Coordination Center) in a variety of support roles.
Hundreds of NETs have volunteered thousands of hours in support of all of our communities here in Portland since the beginning of the pandemic.
Personally, I have, among other things:
* spent an afternoon as a wayfinder at a local vaccine clinic,
* zoomed with our wonderful local co-housing community – PDX Commons – talking about emergency preparedness issues,
* zoomed with the KERNS NET and the Pearl District NET to keep up-to-date with efforts in other neighborhoods,
* attended almost weekly Zoom meetings on Wednesday nights with NETs and NET applicants from all over the city,
* did eprep outreach via snail mail and email with new neighbors on my block,
* participated in a City-wide Deployment Exercise via Zoom with more than two hundred NETs and other emergency responders from around the country. This was a ‘day two scenario’ mirroring what a response would look like the day after an earthquake in PDX, and
* continued with my own professional development, taking FEMA classes, sometimes more than once. (I am not great at multiple-choice questions, but I am persistent.)
I know there are many ways that Sunnysiders are supporting other Sunnysiders. It really does take a village and the willingness to step up for each other in a mutual aid capacity.
With gratitude to all of you who care very much about Sunnyside.
