PBEM Community Resilience Flagship Programs

Portland Neighborhood Emergency Teams (Portland NET)

The Portland NET program is modeled from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program. The CERT program began in 1985 in Los Angeles, and was itself modeled from a similar program the Los Angeles Fire Department observed in Tokyo, Japan. Los Angeles Fire became interested in citizen response programs following the 1985 Mexico City Earthquake, where untrained citizens rescued around 800 people but nearly 100 people of those citizens lost their lives in rescue attempts. FEMA adopted and standardized the Los Angeles CERT program in 1993. In 1994, Rachael Jacky with Portland Fire and Rescue (PF&R) adapted the national CERT curriculum for Portland and incorporated it with existing emergency response volunteer teams. In order to avoid confusing the CERT program with the Portland Police Bureau’s Special Emergency Reaction Team (SERT), the program was renamed the Portland Neighborhood Emergency Team program (NET). Many volunteer emergency response programs in the Portland region (such as Tigard and Beaverton) have retained the CERT title.

How is Portland NET different from CERT?

All CERTs are managed at the local level and, therefore, all CERTs are shaped by their local communities and often have slightly different rules and practices from each other. Portland NET differs not only in name, but in several key ways as well that CERTs integrating with Portland NET should know about:

1. Portland NET uses different branding and a different palette than CERT programs. Almost all CERT programs have like branding and are distinguished with lime green helmets and vests. Portland NET uses red-orange. For more information on NET branding and colors, please see the article on Program Design Elements. Unfortunately, this also means finding NET branded equipment much more difficult than finding CERT branded equipment.
2. Basic NET Training expands on Basic CERT Training. A typical Basic CERT class runs 20 to 25 hours. NET basic training runs 27 to 30 hours. The reason is that NET Basic includes the whole Basic CERT textbook, but also adds on a course in radio communications and a course in community outreach. The Basic CERT curriculum on "Team Organization" is also significantly changed for Portland NET.
3. NET organization and training reflects Portland response needs for the aftermath of a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake. Most CERTs are comprised of a single team covering a single service area. PBEM organizes NETs into many neighborhood-scale teams and each are responsible for their own Operations Plan. NET advanced training courses also reflect post-CSZ earthquake needs: wilderness first aid, emergency animal sheltering, mental health first aid, and so on.
4. NET is exceptionally well resourced compared to most CERTs. The City of Portland has made a major investment in the NET program, dedicating three staff members to program management and an average of $150k in general fund dollars for expenses. Some community resilience programming in Portland, including NET, is also funded through Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) grants. As a result of these inputs, Portland NET includes over 2,000 volunteers contributing an average of 30,000 hours annually.