One of the biggest challenges facing any neighborhood in disaster planning is determining their role and finding suitable partners.  In Woodland Hills,CA., a plan was developed in conjunction with the area Neighborhood Watch Teams and the Neighborhood Council to develop an existing infrastructure. The Neighborhood Watch Teams. The teams already know each other, they have a basic communications plan in place and they know the hazards in their communities.

To begin with, we incorporated Woodland Hills Neighborhood Watch as a non-profit, filed a 501c3 application for non-profit status and enlisted fudning support from the Citizens Corp and the Neighborhood Council.

The first 25 Neighborhood Watch members have just completed CERT (Communtiy Emergency Response Team) training and with the limited funds we have the team was outfitted with a backpack filed with basic PPE's.

A twelve month training and coordination plan was initiated as well. On odd numbered months there is a monthly Area Planning Meeting and on the even numbered months, on going skills development classes are planned. In the planning meetings we are developing strategies for safe evacuation zones and incident command.  In June we are planning a drill that would incorporate our new plans.

The team also just purchased 3 dozen used Kenwood radios and an enhanced communcitions plan is being developed along with an FCC license for our own radio frequency.