Finding out if we can bring block readiness back to Cow Hollow & the Marina District….

Cow Hollow once had block captains. The Marina once had ALL of the San Francisco Fire Department’s certified neighborhood emergency responders.

That’s because after the destructive Loma Prieta earthquake, the Marina became the birthplace of the Neighborhood Emergency Response Team (NERT) program here in the city, and it has been a standard for the program spreading to other neighborhoods as 20,000 people have been trained in the past 30 years.

But the area’s readiness seems to have peaked and ebbed as people move away, follow other interests, age out of certain activities.

I have taken the pulse of the area as the official coordinator of Cow Hollow and Marina NERTs the past year and a half. I’ve discovered that NERT may have been born here after the Loma Prieta but there are only a handful of active NERTs left here.

I’ve had a chance to connect with former block captains and longtime NERTs in the area. “I couldn’t find anyone to take over from me,” one 80-year old block captain and former NERT told me. “The only person I still know on the block is 90.”

We have to take the baton from earlier neighbor responders, and pass it on to our neighbors of today. The people next door and the people across the street.

And there’s only one hour we need to focus on: The Golden Hour.

The Golden Hour, or first 60 minutes after a disaster happens, is when neighbors rely on each other. We can check on each other, treat minor injuries, and put out small fires.

The first 60 minutes after a disaster happens is when neighbors rely on each other. We can check on each other, treat minor injuries, and put out small fires.

A block - both sides of the street, about 20 homes - can learn to work together in “the Golden Hour” where we can make the most impact as neighbors.

Can we bring block readiness back to Cow Hollow & the Marina District? To do so, groups and leaders in our district can use this easy and free 9 step neighborhood response plan class that the SF Fire Department supports.

“Do you know how to turn off your neighbor’s gas?”

— It's one of the best ways to prevent fire.

Do you know how to stop a small fire from spreading from one home to the next home? How to shut off the water main so pollutants don’t enter your system? Or how to alert your neighbors you might need help?

Each block in our district and the city can learn these life-saving and property-protecting skills.

You can learn it in a free 9-Step block-by-block readiness program, like the one offered last week at the Golden Gate Valley Branch Library.

According to this SF Fire Dept preparedness program called Map Your Neighborhood (MYN), we do better in disaster response when we know each other.

As a NERT, the first households I am most likely to be able to reach and work with for emergency resilience are on my own block: gas turn offs, fire extinguisher shares, staging and gathering areas in homes and garages.

A year ago I took this 90 minute class, it covers what happens BEFORE NERTs deploy to help the wider neighborhood. We check our household, our building, our block.

I am probably the only person on my block to take the class, I believe I am the only NERT on my block. I wish I weren’t the only one who knows this. I see that NERT is a commitment and our area could start with something lighter weight like MYN. It’s an easy way to increase a block’s readiness for emergency situations that gets neighbors talking to each other about how we can each help. You can read about it here.

My takeaway from the class? I thought, “I’m not ready to tell my neighbors! That means….my block is definitely not ready.”

I can’t deploy as a NERT before I have taken stock of my own area. Since taking the class, I’ve been mapping my own block. I started talking to local neighbor associations about spreading the response plan to larger groups of neighbors.

Last week I attempted the next step: telling my neighbors about it (I even printed out flyers!) and inviting them to a class thanks to the dedication of the instructor of the class, fellow NERT Sue Brown. She is committed to making a regular schedule of events and bringing this class to a person on every block, and then to all the neighbors on that block — the class is a funnel of sorts, inducting us into a plan that only works if our neighbors know about it and take part.

I invited every household on my block to consider attending this event or another one upcoming. We can’t do the plan if they don’t know the plan.

“In a disaster, when emergency responders like 911, fire, police, utilities, EMS are overwhelmed, we are the responders.”

— That's you and me.

We can revitalize our block readiness

With a free and regularly offered 9 STEP PROGRAM supported by the SF Fire Department. Pictured at Golden Gate Valley Library with District 2 Supervisor Stephen Sherrill

I invited community leaders to take the class.

I also invited our new District 2 Supervisor, Stephen Sherrill, who joined the class. Supervisor Sherrill reminded me that he led hurricane response in the Office of Mayor Michael Bloomberg in New York, and then two hurricanes hit the city, so he knows why we need neighborhood readiness training and he’s interested in what we NERTs are doing in Cow Hollow and Marina.

I invited Rich Goss, a member of the security committee of the Cow Hollow Association, to join the class to see how the free fire department readiness class can kick off block-level readiness in our district.

I hope to raise awareness on my block - and all the blocks - to let people know we have a 9-step plan to increase readiness with our neighbors. We just need to be walked through it. This class does that.

All it takes to get started with district readiness is one person from one block to attend the 90 minute class. 

The next classes will be at the Fire Department, Folsom & 19th, June 21  9am and 11 am. If you’re interested, but unable to attend these sessions, please contact Sue Brown, suebrown21@yahoo.com, for information on other sessions. If you’re in my district or neighborhood and interested, you can let me know too!

There’s also a Zoom MYN on June 19. Sign up here.

Drilling with my battalion neighbors at NERT's Citywide Drill Spring 2025

The NERT Citywide Drill Spring 2025 was held at the Couny Fair building in Golden Gate Park this weekend for SF Fire Department neighborhood emergency response team (NERT) volunteers. I’ve been a certified NERT since 2018 and this is the fourth citywide drill I’ve now participated in.

Besides meeting up with NERTs I’m in touch with as the Cow Hollow and Marina District coordinator role I took on since 2024, there were some new opportunities I especially appreciated. Among them:

BATTALION DRILLS

NERT has shifted from small neighborhood teams to Battalion-based groups that encompass 5 or 6 neighborhoods. It’s how we will organize and stage response together in a disaster. We drilled with our Battalion 4 mates, so got to meet them and work with them for the first time. There were 10-12 of us when I joined them for the ALL HAZARD ROOM, a drill that combines a bunch of hazards: water leaks, gas leaks, downed electrical wiring, a victim trapped under heavy rubble, an uninjured neighbor in a wheelchair who wants to stay with the trapped victim, a sudden fire that needs to be suppressed, and earthquake aftershocks.

RADIO OPS, STAGING AREAs

Most of the day I was with the Hams (I got my Technician license last year and haven’t had much chance to use it yet). At this citywide event, radio operators had drills: there was an Auxiliary Communications System Field Team, with Planning and Walking radio groups for two disaster staging areas that mimicked the staging areas we’d set up for each Battalion group in the event of an emergency. I shadowed/scribed for a radio operator taking down incoming incident messages from our Walker and random people coming to the staging area to report their findings, like building collapses, fires, and injuries needing medical attention and rescue, and then communicating that to ACS Field Leader who interfaced with Battalion.

STOP THE BLEED & OPIOID OVERDOSES

There was a short class on naloxone and tourniquets, which I hadn’t taken before. Now we know how to identify an opioid overdose symptoms, and administer a naloxone dose, as well as apply a tourniquet and make a tourniquet in the field with a strip of fabric and a ballpoint pen. Wouldn’t you like to know how to do this? I think we could all learn it. I want to see this common sense public service instruction everywhere, like on bus stops!

DISASTER VICTIM TRAINING VOLUNTEERS

I didn’t do the FIELD TRIAGE drill this time but saw children victim-actors with simulated injuries: broken bones, lacerations. The kids were disaster victim training volunteers and they helped NERTs practice what we’d do to help them if we encountered them in our neighborhoods after a disaster struck and before emergency services could reach them.

Take a look at a video reel of NERT’s Citywide Drill Spring 2025 from the fire department.

Improving a local gateway with indigenous plantings

Saturday morning spent planting native, drought resistant plant species with North End neighbors.

This was the plan: a Saturday morning spent planting native drought resistant plants with my neighbors and others. We would replace a gnarly grass lawn with the hope to make “Richardson and Lombard Streets a more welcoming and beautiful gateway into San Francisco”, in the words of the Cow Hollow Association, and rehabilitate the natural habitat as well.

“Plant food instead!” yelled a drive-by troll.

Thirty of us were on our knees in the dirt, with pick axes and knives, loosening the roots on plants we had just removed from their grow pots. The sun was surprisingly hot for 9:30 a.m., usually this area is slow to warm with all the tall trees and vegetation edging the Presidio not to mention the fogline that people like to say ends at Divisadero, a few blocks further into the city.

“Plant food instead!” a man yelled at us from a car. Literally a drive-by troll.

We were on the highly trafficked road that guides drivers to the Golden Gate Bridge in one direction and welcomes you to the city and neighborhood of Marina District in the other direction. Lots of cars, and carbon monoxide exhaust.

In the Bay Area, people speak their high mind. He’d already zoomed through the intersection but I knew what he meant: create a community food garden, for humans. That’s definitely needed in every area, and I suspect each project needs a plan and resilient support. Yelling the command from a car like a community edge lord doesn’t move the needle much.

It took me a second to react. This IS food, too, I would have told him.

This IS food. These 300 or 400 indigenous plants we’re putting into the ground feed birds, bees, and butterflies.

🤔💭 Our natural resources project with neighbors wasn’t the result of a split second decision, like his, to answer the question “Should we use this particular plot for food for humans or nature?” This particular plot was solved long ago, by a grass lawn. Agitating to change the lawn took three years and a lot of people.

The improvement melds the distinct situation and needs of the land with the ability and interest of the people and organizations around to care for it. Once these small plants and seedlings - grown from seed by the Presidio Nursery where I started volunteering last year - are established, they will not require further irrigation efforts or costs. They are intended to be hardy, and withstand the vagaries of the weather and rain seasons, and carbon monoxide from cars, and thrive.

View fullsize

Excerpt from Cow Hollow Association newsletter, November 2024. You can donate towards the fencing right here.

The Richardson Gateway Project is the work of numerous area leaders like former city supervisor Catherine Stefani who secured the initial funding of $50,000 three years ago, and Cynthia Gissler of the Cow Hollow Association who invited the neighbors today. We were joined by members of the City’s Department of Public Works and the Presidio Trust, supervised by National Park Service and Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy Volunteer Supervisor Staff. Cynthia’s Aunt Caroline, a nonagenarian retired public school teacher, handled our release form paperwork for the day.

We were joined by the newly appointed city supervisor for District 2, Stephen Sherrill and his son.

🙏 to the people who honked with thumbs up, we did see you!

My wish for everyone out there:

I hope you find your chance to contribute to a local garden of your choosing.

If this particular block is anything judge by, community gardens are not “drive-by” efforts. They take commitment, leadership, time, resources, collaboration.

Among the hundreds of plants we put in the ground today: foxtail agave, coyote brush, monkey flower, buckeye, poppies, coffee berry, blue blossom, sage wort, deer grass, hummingbird sage, aster, wild rose, moor grass, anemone, sagebrush, seaside daisy, bluff lettuce.

Cassandra Awards for our news and information mapmakers

“Our news & information landscape has changed. Our mapmakers have changed. ”

— Announcing The Cassandra Awards for civic participators/participatory media/Fifth Estate content creators, dot connectors, and sense makers in our networks

Image: Using AI voice generation for an audio script of numerous quotes from my curated KIP (“Knowledge is Power”) sources on Twitter/Xitter which begin to tell the larger story of this moment, all in 5 minutes. Read the whole transcript here.

Image: This is the conclusion. I announce The Cassandra Awards. You’ve just heard words from some of my nominees.

LISTEN TO THE BIGGER PICTURE

You can listen here or read the transcript with credits here

“You’ve just heard words from some of my nominees.”

— I invite you all to check their receipts.

With The Cassandra Awards and other information interfaces for you to engage with, my passion project KIP aims to re-educate the entire population in digital media literacy, information literacy, digital civic literacy, and help de-program those who have fallen victim to disinformation.

Until we learn to be better information consumers, we'll keep falling for disinformation

The day after the 2024 US Election.

Related data points in my timeline:

A certain personality type is found to most readily fall for poor information.

Also, news- information- digital- and media-literacy are teachable and learnable.

We need to help people be better information citizens.

That fact has never been clearer. It’ll help people be better voters, better neighbors, and better able to collectively work on our biggest issues, all the way to the climate crisis. It’s why I keep looking for ways to bring KIP, my passion project of the past 9 years, to the world.

Click on any of the tags below to see my previous posts on these topics which millions are now waking up to today. Click on the headline of each post to open it and see continue clicking on the tags in each post to dive deeper.

The best part of mentorship is seeing what it catalyzes for all of you ❣️

Let's recap

I nominate Stephanie LB @LincolnsBible Black for a Cassandra Award.

Here’s the summer before. 2018.

“Treason is the reason for the season, someone said on Twitter.

I shared it on my Instagram along with contemporary Tweets from Louis Neufeld who was very early on many germane threads that drive our headlines today. Her 2017 threads deserve a receipts challenge. I nominate her for a Cassandra Award.