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Cupertino hears briefing on emergency operations center readiness
Summary
Interim emergency-management consultant Jim Frawley and community coordinator Ken briefed the council on when the city would activate its Emergency Operations Center, the EOC’s organization and the role of resident volunteers in preparedness.
Jim Frawley, the city’s interim emergency management consultant, told the Cupertino City Council on Nov. 18 that the city activates its Emergency Operations Center when “a situation gets large enough,” explaining that activation levels range from monitoring to full community support for incidents such as major earthquakes or large fires.
Frawley described three activation levels and said the city manager (designated as director of emergency services under local ordinance) or their designee typically makes the activation decision. He said the EOC provides centralized messaging, sheltering and coordination with first responders when needed and that the city’s primary EOC is a “warm” facility at the city hall complex, with an alternate location at the city service center.
Ken, who identified himself as the coordinator of the city’s citizen corps volunteers (including amateur radio, Medical Reserve Corps and CERT), emphasized the role of resident volunteers and outreach. “We have roughly 1,000 volunteers,” he said, and noted that community preparedness affects response capacity given Cupertino’s daytime population increases.
The presentation outlined standard EOC organization—operations, planning/intelligence, logistics and finance—and explained that the city follows California’s Standardized Emergency Management System (SEMS/CIMS) and the federal National Incident Management System (NIMS) to ensure interoperability with county, state and federal partners.
Councilmembers asked procedural questions about how the city would communicate activation to elected officials and the public. Staff said they would provide the presentation materials to council and continue tracking needs while the city completes its recruitment for a permanent emergency manager.
The presentation was cut short when the meeting later experienced a Zoom/AV outage and was adjourned; staff said the slide deck and presentation will be posted and questions can be routed through the city manager.
