User:Groschopf/sandbox

Portland Neighborhood Emergency Teams (Portland NET) is a community emergency response team made up of civilian volunteers in the city of Portland, Oregon. Citizens are recruited into a program through the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management, often trained by the fire department and act under their own direction in the case of the Cascadia subduction zone earthquake overdue to hit the Pacific Northwest . Participants must clear a criminal record check, complete 28 hours of classroom training and complete a half-day field exercise in order to complete the program.

Team members train in light search and rescue, disaster fire suppression, basic disaster medical operations, the incident command system, preparedness, resiliency and participate in mass casualty drills. Opportunities for further education after course completion include courses in tying knots, wilderness first aid, CPR/AED certification, psychological first aid, mass casualty drills, etc. NET team members also receive training in setting up BEECN (Basic Earthquake Emergency Communication Node) locations and using a system of line-of-sight walkie-talkies to communities in the case of an earthquake disabling the usual methods of communication.

Portland lacked a seismic code up until 1974 and none appropriate to withstand a 9.0 subduction zone quake until 1994. The city of Portland is linked by many bridges, many of which were not built to withstand a Cascadia subduction zone  megathrust earthquake. A large number of Portland's firefighters live across the river in Vancouver, WA. Should the bridges go down in the quake, residents throughout the region would be on their own. NETs act as second responders and try to stabilize the situation while mitigating loss of life.

The Portland, Oregon organization is referred to as "NET" (Neighborhood Emergency Team) rather than national program "CERT" (Community Emergency Response Team) to avoid being confused with Portland's SERT (Special Emergency Reaction Team ) and to address it's unique regional seismic threat.