Three days before the primary, hundreds of volunteers spread out, undeterred by rain and ready to go door to door. It was real grass roots organizing, Jackie Snelling said.
But the volunteers weren’t politicking. They weren’t working for any political party. They were going to neighborhoods around the county, spreading the word about emergency preparedness.
“I was glad to do it,” said Edward McGonagle, a distribution volunteer in Fairlington. “It always feels good to do some service for the community, but this wasn’t a biggie at all.” But on second thought, McGonagle said, it could be a big deal. “In emergency situations, it’s important to get the word around.”
Arlington Prepares: Door-to-Door drew hundreds of volunteers from neighborhoods around the county, with the goal of ensuring that every household in the county had information on what to do in an emergency. Bags left on doorknobs around the county contained brochures, in English and Spanish, on signing up for Arlington Alert, emergency planning booklets from the Red Cross and a refrigerator magnet with a list of emergency contact numbers.
Volunteers produced 110,000 information packets, and 100,000 of those were distributed to homes and businesses on Saturday. “One woman did 370 households,” said Kim Smith, co-chair of the Civic Federation’s public services committee and a Citizen Corps Council member.
“We wanted to get the material to every citizen, and we wanted to get the material to them in a way they would take notice of it,” said Snelling, head of the Civic Federation’s public preparedness initiative and chair of Arlington Prepares events with the Citizen Corps Council.
<b>CITIZEN CORPS COUNCIL,</b> and its offshoot Arlington Prepares, were formed by groups of citizens shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, working as an advisory council to County Manager Ron Carlee on emergency preparedness. The council has recruited trainees for citizen emergency response training from the county, and has spent years implementing plans for emergency preparedness — plans that led to the door-to-door campaign.
Arlington Prepares staff members are still working to get the bags on apartment doors — many volunteers came from neighborhood and civic associations that do not always include apartment dwellers, and out-of-state landlords were occasional obstacles. “We’re giving ourselves to the end of the month to reach everybody,” said Smith.
But overall, Saturday’s distribution counted as a success, said Snelling. “It was a positive and exciting demonstration of the value of grass roots, community and neighborhood associations.”
<b>GETTING THE WORD</b> out was a success, but Arlington Prepares: Door-to-Door was a success on another front, said Snelling. “We wanted to test our ability, and build the infrastructure for communicating information to the household level.”
To that end, Arlington Prepares: Door-to-Door was a kind of dry run for an emergency, letting Snelling, Smith, county, state and national emergency preparedness officials see how information flows from county sources out to individual county houses and apartments.
“Many neighborhoods were able to do the distribution [on Saturday] using their newsletter delivery network,” said Snelling. “The neighborhoods that were able to do this most efficiently were the ones with block level organization, and block captains. … That makes a community stronger.”
To build on that lesson, Snelling said she hopes to work with the Citizen Corps to build up Arlington blocks participating in Neighborhood Watch. “I view that as potentially the base for community building at the neighborhood and block levels.”
<b>IN APARTMENT BUILDINGS,</b> the network for getting information is not as established as in the county’s neighborhoods of single-family homes.
Both types of neighborhoods posed problems on Saturday, said Snelling.
“These areas are harder to go door to door: areas with sparser populations, and others where you have a very dense population.” Those boil down to apartment buildings in the Metro corridors, and older, hilly neighborhoods in North Arlington.
Some civic associations already work to include apartment dwellers in neighborhood events. “One civic association had 37 apartment buildings within their limits,” said Smith. “They were bound and determined” to distribute the packets to all apartment residents.
But in other cases, apartment owners were hesitant to give volunteers access to the buildings. “Some people don’t want to be bothered,” said Smith. But in most cases, apartment landlords were willing to open the front doors “as soon as they understood it wasn’t a solicitation,” she said.
Those are the obstacles that test runs, such as Saturday’s door-to-door distribution, can bring to light. Test runs mean the doors will be open in a real emergency, said Smith, if the owners know who will be coming in. “It’s hard to connect on the first go-round.”