CAMARILLO : DART Plays Key Role When Disasters Strike

In the minutes after the Jan. 17 Northridge earthquake, members of Camarillo’s emergency citizens patrol quickly checked the safety of their loved ones and homes. Then they sprinted to their mobile command center at the city’s Palm Drive police station.

Less than 30 minutes later, Disaster Assistance Response Team members had the command center’s auxiliary electrical generators whirring. Electricity flowed to flood lamps that illuminated the darkened police station parking lot, and to police and fire radios that crackled with emergency messages.

Shortly thereafter, more of DART’s 18 volunteers arrived and began forming survey teams to detect quake damage. Still other squads began relaying messages over the command center’s radios, helping sheriff’s deputies and firefighters answer calls for help.

Although Camarillo suffered little damage, the quake served as a key test of the volunteers’ effectiveness, said Ventura County Sheriff’s Sgt. Michael Lewis, who works with the team.

“They did a great job out there,” Lewis said. “Because of their training, they were able to do some things that really assisted us in assisting the public.”

But it does not take a natural disaster to activate the team. During last week’s three-alarm blaze at a medical building on Las Posas Road and last year’s wildfires, DART members helped with crowd control and shuttled food and water to weary firefighters.

The state-certified disaster workers must undergo 80 hours of training before they can be deployed, Lewis said. That training includes cardiopulmonary resuscitation, first aid, search-and-rescue techniques, traffic and crowd control, casualty management and triage.

The Camarillo DART is the only operating team in the county. Similar teams are being formed in Thousand Oaks and Moorpark, according to spokesman Mike Pariso.

Funded by the city of Camarillo, which allocates about $20,000 annually for command center operation, uniforms, radios and other expenses, the group provided an estimated 1,400 volunteer hours in 1993, officials said.

Pariso said the Camarillo DART, whose members range in age from 18 to 72, are not a group of firefighter and police “wanna-bes.”

“There is definitely a sense of adventure connected to what we do,” Pariso said. “But I think every one of us joined because we wanted to do something for our community.”