In the early hours of Aug. 18, heavy rainfall and wind loosened the earth above a small neighborhood at the base of Harbor Mountain in Sitka. By late morning the unstable ground gave way, and several landslides tore down the mountain in a matter of seconds. All told, the landslides killed three men, destroyed at least one house entirely and caused several families to evacuate their homes.<\/p>\n
It was Andrew Bogar\u2019s second day on the job as a disaster response specialist for the American Red Cross in Southeast Alaska. He was tasked with setting up a shelter for those displaced by the slides. Now, five months later, Bogar is once again preparing to set up a shelter for landslide victims. This time, though, the people using the shelter will be actors, and the landslide, imaginary.<\/p>\n
This Saturday, starting at 9 a.m. in the University of Alaska Southeast Joint Use Facility, the Red Cross will be hosting a \u201csheltering exercise\u201d following a mock landslide to determine how prepared Juneau is for a disaster similar to the Sitka slides. The landslide in this case will not be real, but Bogar said the experience the volunteers take away from the event certainly will be.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will help engage as many volunteers as possible,\u201d Bogar said. \u201cIt\u2019s really kind of a chance to put a finger on the pulse of our organization to see where we stand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Come Saturday morning, about half of Bogar\u2019s 30 Juneau-based volunteers \u2014 perhaps more depending if more show up at the last minute \u2014 will set up a shelter as if they had just received a disaster call. The event is open to the public and will function both as a drill for volunteers and an \u201copen house\u201d for any community members who are interested in stopping by.<\/p>\n
Bogar is relying on community members to play the role of people affected by the mock disaster. \u201cThe more realistic we make it, the better it will be for our volunteers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Though the event will last most of the day (there\u2019s no set end time), Bogar said that community members are free to stop by at any point and don\u2019t need to stay longer than an hour if they don\u2019t want to. Attendees will be free to participate as actors, but they will also be free simply to observe the exercise if they want.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really important that we engage everybody in the community to the lowest level possible \u2014 Capitol to cul-de-sac,\u201d Bogar said. \u201cA disaster isn\u2019t going to RSVP.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bogar and his team will be serve participants breakfast, including Heritage coffee, and lunch during the exercise.<\/p>\n
As far as Bogar know, this will be the first such exercise held in Juneau \u201cin a long time,\u201d but he\u2019s looking to change that. Bogar hopes to make this an annual event, and Red Cross spokesperson Beth Bennett said that Juneauites can expect that to be the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cAndrew is very dedicated to helping people prepare for disasters, and he\u2019s a real go-getter,\u201d she said. \u201cWe want to provide as much training as we can to anybody who is interested.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bennett, who is based in Anchorage, will be flying down to Juneau for the weekend to participate in the exercise, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the early hours of Aug. 18, heavy rainfall and wind loosened the earth above a small neighborhood at the base of Harbor Mountain in Sitka. By late morning the unstable ground gave way, and several landslides tore down the mountain in a matter of seconds. All told, the landslides killed three men, destroyed at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-12836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12836"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=12836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}