City Club marks 9/11 with neighborhood preparedness program

Presenter: Sandra Bishop marks the 25th anniversary of 9/11 as moderator of a special City Club presentation on the neighborhood’s role in emergency preparedness. 

Sandra Bishop: My name is Sandra Bishop. I’m a longtime member of City Club and I’ve been a neighborhood leader for many years. 

Currently I’m on the board of the Jefferson Westside Neighbors (the JWN), which is the neighborhood directly to the west of us here. And I’m also on three neighborhood-related preparedness committees.

Thank you all for being here today. It’s a very special day. 

Twenty-five years ago, tragedy struck in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. on Sept. 11, 2001. Many of us remember where we were that morning, and many of us remember the people that were lost that day. 

For me, it was a day that awakened something in me that after all these years, I credit with fueling my enthusiasm and willingness to try to be better prepared for the unexpected and to help others be prepared for the unexpected. 

I was on a United Airline flight on Sept. 11. I was flying from Paris to Washington D.C. U.S. airspace was closed. I didn’t make it to D.C. The planes were diverted. The plane I was on landed in Nova Scotia, and I was registered as a refugee.

I didn’t make it back to the United States for five days. For four of those days, I had no idea how long I’d be kept out of the country, no idea when I’d get home, and I couldn’t imagine what the people at home were going through. 

It was a shocking, eye-opening, and yet enlightening experience. It revealed to me the incredible value of resiliency, and showed me the inevitability of relying on the people that you’re with when something of that magnitude happens.

When something tragic or unexpected happens, people pull together.

That experience is probably one of the reasons I’m here today, helping to host this program on Eugene neighborhood awareness and on Eugene neighborhood associations and emergency preparedness.

In Eugene, it’s unlikely that we’ll have a human-caused 9/11-type disaster, but we are ripe for natural disasters of staggering magnitude. I’m referring to the possibility of a catastrophic seismic event like a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake. We’ve also had a lot of experience with fire and to a lesser extent with flooding. 

Here in Eugene, in Lane County, in Oregon, which is now 91% drought conditions, we regularly experience heat events, ice storms, wind, and other dangerous weather.

With climate change fueled by human activity, more unpredictable weather and extreme storm events are likely. What’s needed in the face of this kind of uncertainty is relocalization. 

This logical move to relocalize is essentially what we’re talking about today as we explore the structure and function of neighborhood associations.

Using emergency preparedness as an example, it’s easy to see the value of organizing in local groups.

Many neighborhood associations are working on emergency preparedness. Several have very well-developed radio communication networks, many offer volunteer opportunities, and a lot of resources for emergency preparedness.

Presenter: Sandra Bishop calls for hyperlocal organizing with your nearby neighbors. You can listen to the complete session on KLCC – NPR for Oregonians on Monday night. 

You can learn more about your neighborhood association at the city of Eugene website.

You can learn more specialized skills through the Eugene Springfield Community Emergency Response Teams, the CERTs. They are practicing Saturday, Sept. 12, for their annual citywide radio communications exercise in October. Their website is Eugene-CERT.com.