Gutting americorps weakens the emergency response of CA

By Lauren Levitic, special for Calmatters

This comment was originally published by CalmattersS Register about their ballots.

Last month I closed my yellow vest.

We were there after Wildiri torn through Los Angeles Communities standing with survivors in shelters, donation centers, disaster recovery centers and burned neighborhoods. We have helped Californians take their first steps towards recovery.

And now we are gone.

After the Federal Government Reducing Financing for Americorps’ Disaster assistance programs, more than 60 of us in the California Corps for Emergency Response, said our service was completing early. Some of my teammates were still in the field when the news came in. They had to get together and leave while the work was still unfolding.

It’s not just a few discouraged young adults who lose the opportunity to serve their community. It’s about what we lose as a country When we cut the pipeline of people trained and ready to show themselves in times of crisis.

This derailment happened in a curious weather. Our deployment in Los Angeles was the biggest operation in the history of the California program. Our teams have helped more than 26,000 fire survivors to navigate the FEMA documents, replace lost identifiers and find emergency housing.

We did not arrive with all the answers, but we came with compassion, training and desire to listen. One afternoon I sat with an adult couple as they showed me pictures of their destroyed home. They didn’t want much – just someone to translate them through the maze of shapes and requirements as they tried to make sense of their new reality.

Another day I met a young man sitting in front of a disaster recovery center because he was too nervous to go inside. I was sitting with him for a while until he told how he evacuated his elderly neighbors as the fire approached their neighborhood. The trauma I suffered was significant and it was clear that he was struggling to process it. Fortunately, we were able to contact him with the wonderful people at the District Department of Mental Health to get the necessary services.

Moments like these are not much attention. But they matter.

As a former Marine, I saw how critical it was to study, ready -to -miss people in the right place at the right time. The California Emergency Corps gave me a new mission: help with communities to prepare, react and recover from disaster. This program provided a critical experience to manage emergencies that I would not get otherwise.

I thought it was the beginning of my career. For me (and so many others) it was to be the first step, the start of a public service.

Instead, it is cut.

The argument you can hear is that the national service is too expensive, but this is not the case with Americorps. For modest scholarships, people can serve their communities and gain a valuable career experience for some of what would cost these services. Emergency response members provide support through fires, floods, pandemics and earthquakes, helping to fill the gaps that no one else can or will.

We are not losing, fraud or abuse. We are vital components of the communities we serve.

At a time when wildfiresFloods and climate-controlled disasters are becoming more frequent, we need competent and experienced disaster response specialists. They do not appear magically. They have to start somewhere. Programs like this are how we grow the next generation of emergency reactors, crisis leaders and leaders of community resilience.

The termination of the body program is not only short -sighted, but dangerous.

I am proud of the work we have done. I am grateful to my teammates and mentors. I am also broken by the heart – not only for myself, but also for people who have not yet had the chance to help.

If you didn’t know who we were before, I hope you do it now. We were the ones in yellow vests and we just started.

This article was Originally Published on CalMatters and was reissued under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Noderivatives License.