Marin Valley Emergency Safety Team
MVEST provides education and training for a disaster-resilient community through individual and neighborhood preparedness. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to participate.
The Marin Valley community is nested within a beautiful wildland of rolling hills, brush, trees, and wildlife with stunning vistas of the San Pablo Bay. Yet living in this natural setting along with being in close proximity to a known earthquake fault line has its inherent dangers. We also live in homes that are usually less solidly built than conventional houses and may be more susceptible to fire. Parts of the Park are in flood- or landslide-prone areas.
To help strengthen our community against these risks, we organized ourselves into a volunteer team: MVEST—Marin Valley Emergency Safety Team. We assist each other to prepare for times of emergencies and do whatever we can to reduce and mitigate our inherent hazards through preparedness, training, and teamwork.
MVEST is run solely by volunteers.
Mission
MVEST’s mission is to identify natural and man-made hazards within the community that could cause property damage, personal injury or mortality; to reduce risks through community awareness, preparedness, and prevention; to provide safe, organized, volunteer responses to incidents when professional responders are delayed; to help support and assist professional responders as needed; and to prepare the community for expedient and comprehensive incident recovery. The MVEST program is based on guidelines established by US Dept. of Homeland Security, FEMA, The American Red Cross, Cal OES, and Marin County CERT.
Teams
MVEST is organized and maintained by the MVEST Steering Committee, a standing committee under PAC. The Steering Committee normally meets weekly at the clubhouse (see the current Marin Valley calendar for details). This committee has a number of teams that are organized into separate skills and community services to manage preparation and responses to major emergencies that affect our community. The Steering Committee coordinates and facilitates training and exercise schedules and other MVEST activities.
- Personal Preparedness
- Incident Command
- Block Captains and Zone Chiefs
- Disaster Search and Rescue
- Emergency Medical Team
- Emotional First-Aid
- Pet Preparedness
- Communications
- Disaster Relief and Recovery
- Firewise Committee
Firewise Committee
Firewise Committee: Firewise is a national organization that encourages homeowners and communities to learn about and be prepared for the risk of fire. In late 2016 the Marin Valley community was certified as a Firewise Community after accomplishing a comprehensive application process. This is critical for us because of the following: the natural habitat around the Marin Valley community is considered a WUI, or Wildlife Urban Interface. We are highly vulnerable to wildfires with potential for immense property destruction and personal injury or death. It is the job of our Firewise Committee to learn what we can do to mitigate this risk, share this knowledge with the community of residents, and promote action programs that will make a difference.
To this end our Firewise team has initiated programs that have led to
1) increased defensible space around our homes, and to an approximate 100-200 foot perimeter around the Park
2) eliminated most of the junipers and other highly flammable landscape plants within the Park
3) continued education of our residents about homeowner fire preparedness and prevention. MVEST alerts residents to important Firewise presentations to the community such as the following: Living With Fire. Each regular MVEST meeting includes a report by the Firewise Committee.
MVEST Structure
MVEST divides the Park into six zones, each with a zone chief. The zones are further divided into blocks. Each block of about ten homes has a block captain to assist residents of the block in emergencies. Having three or more backup block captains helps ensure that someone can step in if the regular block captain is not available during an emergency.
Block Captain Brigade
This team is the “boots on the ground” of MVEST. There are 315 homes in Marin Valley, with approximately 425 residents. We have divided the community into six zones, each containing an average of about five “blocks”. A Block Captain is assigned to each block to communicate messages to individual residents about personal preparedness, prevention, and emergency mitigation measures. During an emergency such as a power outage, fire, earthquake, or flood, Block Captains also provide rapid community assessment and status reports to IC via their respective Zone Chiefs—and in return, rapid and thorough dissemination of information and directives to the residents from the IC as the community responds to the emergency. Block Captains also perform a “Neighborhood Watch” function.
MVEST Welcomes New Volunteers
Most volunteers meet about two to four times a year for training, organizing, and social gatherings. If you would like more information or if you might like to become an MVEST volunteer, please contact John Hansen.