Your Neighborhood Eyes and Ears When Disaster Strikes

When a calamity befalls us, we are reassured that our First Responder protectors are on the job and doing their highly-trained best on the community’s behalf. Often those entities are attacking the unfolding emergency on a vaguely understood battlefront somewhere. Our faith in these heroes is never misplaced. But in those chaotic first hours of an unfolding emergency, a major threat to everyone’s safety is confusion in the immediate neighborhood.

Since 1987, the Montecito Emergency Readiness & Radio Action Group (M.E.R.R.A.G.) has been the Montecito Fire Protection District’s neighborhood eyes and ears, a cohort of trained, embedded local volunteers serving to augment our responders’ efforts. “At the time of a disaster,” says M.E.R.R.A.G. (pronounced “Mirage”) Treasurer Bill Vollero, “when we’re activated, our role is not to assist with rescues, but rather to use our network of neighborhood radios to communicate status reports to M.E.R.R.A.G. Command. Ideally, and through ongoing preparation, we in our respective neighborhoods have a network of people who know which of us is the radio carrier, and can provide a neighborhood-level view for transmission to the responders.” 

M.E.R.R.A.G. is a not-for-profit organization operating with ongoing guidance from the MFPD, Water, and Sanitary districts. Trish Davis is its current president. “When Montecito Fire activates us, then we’re officially representing on their behalf. If it’s to set up a clearly marked Information Kiosk near the intersection of San Ysidro and East Valley roads in Montecito, M.E.R.R.A.G. members there will disseminate real-time information, following a direct briefing by the Fire Department. They will provide us maps so people in the community can have a clear, real-time sense of where the disaster is at any given moment. Montecito Fire may send its Public Information Officer, Christina Atchison, to explain what’s happening. In that way we provide a focal point of official information in the community. We are a very visible presence when activated,” Davis says. Also, the M.E.R.R.A.G. Board meets at MFPD Station #1 monthly to stay abreast of fire department protocol and operations, and to constantly re-evaluate and review its own tasks.

The critical role M.E.R.R.A.G. members perform in an emergency setting means they are a community resource. But these emergency responsibilities only follow Community Emergency Response Team training, which all M.E.R.R.A.G. members are required to complete. “CERT is a training program sponsored by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency),” Vollero says. “There’s a CERT network associated with FEMA, and M.E.R.R.A.G. is the representative for Montecito. At intervals, we provide CERT training, with certified instructors, to community members. We hope this in turn instills confidence in those folks to pursue further preparation that helps their families and neighbors.” 

When disaster strikes a community, neighbor supports neighbor and preparedness is everything. And M.E.R.R.A.G. remains the tip of the preparedness spear.