San Pablo forming emergency services

The service known as 211 serves more than 240 million Americans and provides free and confidential information and referrals. It is a national toll-free, three-digit phone number to call for information about local health and social services and enables individuals to find out vital resource information within their community quickly and easily.

This valuable means of information most importantly plays a major role in disaster response, as it eliminates the tendency for misdirected and guessing of calls, Terstegge said.

Drills occur for the city of San Pablo typically on an annual basis, whether it is participating in a functional one, tabletop or the biannual CERT disaster drill, Arner said.

"We'll do a series of problems for local individuals, and an analysis will assess how the emergency was handled," he said.

In the event of a disaster, San Pablo plans to utilize numerous sites, depending on the nature of the emergency.

"Not all predetermined locations will be open, which is the main reason that we do not publicize locations in advance," Ignacio-Barter said. "The sites will be better known, depending on the emergency and available resources."

Contact Cassandra Juniel at cjuniel.advocate@gmail.com