Ashcreek / Crestwood

Get ready to help your family and your neighbors!

Here’s our challenge: If a major emergency event happens in the city of Portland, such as an earthquake, volcano, pandemic, power grid failure, terrorist attack, storm, or wildfire, Portland city resources most likely won’t be immediately available to help us in our local community.  As a neighborhood, we should plan and prepare to be on our own resources for potentially up to three weeks.

Join your Ashcreek and Crestwood neighbors and get prepared! Contact our NET Team Preparedness Coordinator Pat Murphy to find out more. 

Join us at our local AshCrest NET monthly meeting!

Our group meets from 7:00 – 8:30pm on the first Wednesday of every month at West Portland United Methodist Church at 4729 SW Taylors Ferry Road. Discussion includes committee report-outs, upcoming trainings and events, and some preparedness exercises. Everyone is welcome to attend, meet your neighbors and find out more about how to get prepared and involved.

Be a Block Captain

As a Block Captain, your role would be to meet your neighbors, facilitate their preparations with information they might need, communicate with them regularly and inventory any special skills they have (medical, construction, etc.) Our goal is to have a Block Captain for every 10-20 households. If you’d like to find out who the Block Captain is in your neighborhood, or to find out more about being a Block Captain, please contact Pat Murphy.

Be a Neighborhood Emergency Team (NET) Member

NET Members are Portland residents trained by PBEM and Portland Fire & Rescue to provide emergency disaster assistance within their own neighborhoods. They will likely be first on-the-scene when fire fighters and police are slowed by impassible streets or overwhelmed by calls for help. Find out more about becoming a NET.

Be an Amateur Radio Operator (ARO) or HAM Radio Operator

Radio communications will be critical when phone and cell lines are down. FRS channel 6 (462.6875 MHz) will be the Ashcreek/Crestwood NET channel in a catastrophic emergency.If you are currently an ARO/HAM in the neighborhood and would like to find out more about how to be part of our emergency radio comms team, please contact Jack Klinker.

Identify Yourself as a Skilled Volunteer

Anyone in the neighborhood with emergency-related skills, such as doctors, nurses, construction/handy persons, teachers, counselors, EMTs/Search and Rescuers, etc. will be incredibly valuable during an emergency event. Please identify yourselves to your local Block Captains if you’re willing to help in the case of an emergency.

Be a BEECN Volunteer

Within 24-48 hours of an emergency event, the city of Portland will be activating BEECN (Basic Earthquake Emergency Communication Node) sites in all neighborhoods. BEECNs are places to go to ask for emergency assistance if phone service is down, or report severe damage or injury. They can help you find missing family members or friends, help with minor medical issues, and be a great source of information. Our Ashcreek/Crestwood BEECN site is at West Portland United Methodist Church, 4729 SW Taylors Ferry Road. If you would like to volunteer at this site, you’ll need to attend a formal training. Find out more at the PBEM BEECN page.

Find your closest neighborhood Rally Point

If you need help during an emergency but can’t reach your Block Captain or anyone on the radio, please go to your closest Rally Point, where we will have trained help and some limited medical supplies. (NOTE that the Rally Points most likely won’t have food and water). We have two designated rally points in the Ashcreek/Crestwood neighborhoods: The front door of Smith Elementary School, 8935 SW 52nd Ave, and the play structure at Dickinson Park, 55th and Alfred Court.

Donate!

We received a grant to build some ‘caches’ of emergency supplies to be distributed around the AshCreek / Crestwood neighborhoods…but we need cash to build more. Want to help? Donate here and put “For AshCrest Cache Funding” in the Comments box.

Thank you for your interest!