The Campbell Reporter

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Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer

Disaster Relief: Anne Herosy of Campbell was named 2006 Volunteer of the Year by the Santa Clara County Emergency Managers' Association for her CERT work. For Herosy, it's an avocation.

Job layoff leads to disaster relief training

By Marilyn Fahey

A cold front is enveloping the Bay Area, and Campbell resident Anne Herosy is building a team to run a shelter. She has started calling volunteers at 7 a.m. She feels bad about contacting them so early in the morning, especially since she is asking them to work a 6 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift. She has a countywide list of 660 volunteers to choose from, all American Red Cross-trained, and she knows they won't let her down.

"We ask for these impossible things, and so many people say, 'Yes,' " she says. "In a few hours we have everything we need."

Herosy's team will have a 200-bed shelter at the Santa Clara County fairgrounds up and running by nightfall.

It's a busy day for Herosy, who, along with volunteering with Campbell's Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program, is the coordinator of disaster services human resources for the Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the American Red Cross. Her responsibilities are to coordinate the deployment of local volunteers to wherever they're needed nationwide.

Her efforts have not gone unnoticed.

In December, Herosy was named Volunteer of the Year by the Santa Clara County Emergency Managers' Association for her CERT work.

Yet for Herosy, it's the volunteers who make it happen.

Time and again she says she's seen miracles come out of generosity and giving, including the Pensacola hurricane disaster in 2004.

Herosy wasn't with the Red Cross when Hurricane Ivan hit, but she had completed her CERT training, and when the Red Cross sent out a plea for volunteers, Herosy responded. Although the Red Cross gave her some training before shipping her to Pensacola, Herosy admits she wasn't sure what to do when she got there. She says the volunteers came through because they all had a little bit of training and the willingness to be there, which turned out to be the winning combination.

After 15 days of distributing supplies, Herosy headed home. A year later, with more Red Cross training under her belt, she was on a plane to Houston the day after Hurricane Katrina hit. The volunteers set up shop in a parking lot, as close as they could to New Orleans.

So many buildings were damaged that their stability was iffy at best, Herosy says. She did, however, enter a county building just long enough to get a map, which she used to block out routes for the 22 emergency response vehicles she was in charge of deploying. During that disaster, the volunteers served 15,000 meals a day.

"Katrina was like nothing else," she says. "The force of nature had twisted everything. I saw such strange things--a child's red wagon on top of a house, a coffin on a front lawn."

She shakes her head as if she still can't register the images.

"There are things about this work that are very hard," she says. "You learn about the horrors of life."

She admits to having one bout of depression during Katrina.

"Only because I was tired," she says.

But disaster work doesn't bring her down, she says, just inspires her to work even harder.

For Liz Dietz, director of disaster preparedness and response for the Santa Clara Red Cross, that's a characteristic that makes Herosy an outstanding coordinator, a full-time position Herosy has held since October.

"She's like the Energizer Bunny," says Dietz. "She really stepped up to the plate and has done a super job."

The road to Herosy's work with CERT and the Red Cross began when she was laid off from Siemens, where she was manager of software development.

At that point, she says, "I had to decide whether to get in line and fight for one of the few remaining jobs here or go in a different direction."

CERT offered that alternative.

With the encouragement of her husband, Ernie Phipps, Herosy enrolled in the CERT program and graduated in 2003. Through CERT she learned about fire suppression, how to shut down utilities after an emergency, search and rescue tactics, basic assessment of structural damage, and first aid.

The program brought her a new set of skills, such as "cribbing," a way to move heavy objects using leverage that can come in handy during an emergency.

She discovered that a long crowbar works well for such a task.

"You use the crowbar to raise a corner of the object, but only just slightly," she says. "Then you wedge a block of wood into that space you've created and move on to the next corner."

The Los Angeles Fire Department started the first CERT program in response to 9-11; it was soon picked up by FEMA and spread nationwide. Jon Hackley, who set up the program in Campbell in 2001, says CERT teaches participants to "help themselves, their families and their neighbors" in emergency situations.

"Herosy is one of the program's most active volunteers," says Hackley. "She doesn't have an agenda for helping out; she's just a good, low-key person who fits in well."

Herosy remains dedicated to the program that got her started on a new life path.

"Anytime CERT has an event, I volunteer," she says, including at the graduation exercises, where she once pretended to be a victim who needed rescuing, complete with "shrapnel" protruding from her head.

When Herosy learned she was named Volunteer of the Year, she says was very surprised.

"There's a lot of volunteers out there doing a lot of things," she says.

For Herosy, being recognized for the work isn't the goal; it's the work itself that's important.

"You help out in a shelter, let's say, and in the big scheme of things, it's just a small act. But then again, it's not, it's huge. It's much bigger than you realize," she says.