The City of Boulder and Boulder County have offered some level of emergency preparedness training for many years. But the classes don’t necessarily have the entire community in mind. Many residents don’t have the time to read through a complex manual or pay for expensive training or have the finances to purchase emergency resources.
“The curricula for those trainings is better suited for affluent and well-resourced members of the community,” explains Brenda Ritenour, Boulder’s neighborhood engagement and services manager. “One of the big lessons from the 2013 flood, and again from the COVID-19 pandemic was that people who are historically excluded — people with lower incomes, people with limited English proficiency and people who are not inclined to trust the government — are disproportionately impacted by disasters.
“We knew we needed to do better.”
A new Community-Led Preparedness Training Course (CPT) is being offered to community residents and teaching those residents to become trainers.
Isabel Sanchez, a resident of the Mapleton Mobile Home Park in Boulder and a City of Boulder Community Connector, is no stranger to weathering natural disasters, having survived tornadoes, fires and hurricane-force winds along the Front Range as well as losing her mobile home in the aftermath of the 2013 floods. “It seems like natural disasters are following me,” she says.
The idea for an emergency response course for community members, primarily under-resourced, she says, began during the Marshall Fire.
“The winds were horrible,” she says. “I drove through my neighborhood, and a woman that lives in the park was standing outside. She’s like, ‘I don’t know what to do, I’m losing my mind here. If we have to evacuate, what am I going to do?’
“She asked, ‘Why are you so calm?’ And I was very calm. But I was calm because I felt very prepared.”
The neighbor asked Sanchez to teach her about emergency preparedness. That experience inspired Sanchez to develop a curriculum that teaches residents of mobile home parks and low-income housing how to be ready, she says: “what tools they need, what they should have for water if the power goes out, what foods they should store, what documents they should have in place in a bug out bag.”
More than information, Sanchez realized any training should include funding or actual emergency products.
“Yes, they need the information, but they also need some of the tools to be able to get through and prepare and be ready for an emergency,” she says. “They don’t have the funds to go out and purchase things. I have a lot of seniors in my community that are living very, very tight. I felt that if I was going to teach them, I needed to have the backing to fund the materials that I wanted them to have.
“That is the unique thing about this training. This is very community led.”
Participants receive 10 items: a solar power bank charger, LED headlamp, BPA-free water storage cube, 10-in-1 stainless steel multitool, small portable stove, portable toilet, filtration water straw, and fireproof box for important documents.
With financial support from the Climate Justice Collaborative and the City of Boulder and fiscal sponsorship from the Philanthropiece Foundation, Sanchez and her neighbor began crafting a plan to support the community by developing the curriculum, purchasing the tools and supplies, offering stipends to the Train the Trainer participants and receiving assistance to utilize City space for meetings.
The initial pilot training course highlighted the reality that tools weren’t the only resources that under-resourced participants needed.
“There was a lot of trauma around the experience the community has lived through,” Sanchez says. “People were sharing with me that they were having nightmares. They were being very triggered by talking about the stories. One of the women in our pilot project had gone through the fire and had been burnt and been in a burn unit in Greeley. Hearing her story and how the fire was following her and her hands were burned, her chest, it was really traumatic to relive everything again.”
Later iterations of the training incorporated a class on herbs and tinctures that can be grown at home and used to stay calm and relaxed. Natural Highs, a Boulder nonprofit that teaches coping strategies for stress management and conducts acu-detox therapy, is invited to every workshop.
For participants in the Train the Trainer class, the intention is to learn to teach the class with a partner and get ready to go out into the community to teach families that are in mobile homes or in affordable housing.
“Taking the CPT class has reminded me how helpful we can be to each other by having the right information and tools,” says Nancy Medina, a class participant. “Having a class that brings a different perspective and understanding on how we can work together to add positive support on a daily basis can be a start of a new way of showing with kind words and respectful actions to others.”
David Ensign, another course participant, says understanding safety-related trauma has been among the most impactful parts of the course.
“Often, the voices of our most vulnerable populations are not heard,” he says. “People are so over-burdened taking care of their basic needs that they may not have time to engage energetically with their communities to assure that public safety solutions are equitable and available to all.”
Luz Galicia, a class participant and community organizer who works for the City of Boulder and Colorado 9-5, says offering classes in English and Spanish was important. It is one less barrier for community members who are already facing multiple hurdles.
“I think the biggest challenge will be that in the low-income communities, the households working two and three jobs, it will be very hard for them to fit into one of [the class] schedules,” she says. “When they work so many hours and they have to come back home and have some quality time with their families, it won’t be a priority for them to learn this.”
Galicia says the opportunity as a community organizer is to explain why preparedness should be a priority: having the ability to take care of yourself and your loved ones.
“Teaching them is something that I’m doing right now — trying to bring awareness in how climate justice comes to your house,” she says. “How is it affecting you day by day? How can you, day by day, put a little stone to build something for your own family and then for your relatives and then for your community?”
Sanchez hopes the future of the class will address scheduling challenges. She would like to improve access and reach by recording the training and distributing it to help people learn on their own time.
Cindy Torres participated in the pilot Community-Led Emergency Preparedness Training and is now in the Train the Trainer segment of the class. She lives in the Mapleton Mobile Home Park in Boulder and also lost her home in the aftermath of the 2013 floods. Her hope is to spread the word about this class, highlight the value and encourage new participants to sign up.
Interested in participating in the Community-Led Emergency Preparedness Training class? Contact [email protected]
More from class participants
David Ensign: “Dealing with the challenges of trauma and the resulting emotions like anxiety is important work. Then coming up with productive solutions for emergency preparedness is very powerful, as well as helping each individual be able to take care of their own needs and the needs of family and community members. …. They may also not have time to do all the preparation needed to assure the best outcomes when facing public emergencies. This program allocates city resources to making sure these needs are addressed, and that people are compensated for their time.”
Luz Galicia: “One of my roles is to bring the underrepresented voices here. So, I’m very pleased to participate in this program because, as we mentioned before, as we experience climate justice [and] unpredictable disasters are happening that residents and the people are not ready for. To bring awareness, to bring tools, resources and opportunities to meet other people with the system in place is amazing. So, for me as an organizer, I do believe that this program will create awareness to the communities and to other people around and we can expand the [awareness] for other people to be ready.
“There are always opportunities – I know it’s not easy, but you have to do it. This team is amazing. Every time I come here, I feel inspired.”
This story was produced as part of our After the Fire series examining how Boulder County is preparing for the next disaster two years after the Marshall Fire. Read the other stories:
On foot As communities push for fewer cars, plans for pedestrian evacuations are slowly coming along by Kaylee Harter
‘Find a way’ Through fire and flood and dark of night, Via delivers safe transport — for free by Shay Castle
Rebuilding by the numbers Who’s home, who’s not — and why by Will Matuska
Photo gallery by local filmmaker and photographer Megan Sweeney
