Emergency Preparedness

                Ken Foot spent most of his career as a hardware and software engineer.  Twenty years of that career with Hewlett Packard.  During that time he volunteered with the City of Cupertino in various areas of emergency management and response.  He became a member of Cupertino Amateur Radio Emergency Services (CARES).  This group supplies communications during emergencies as well as community events.  Ken continues with this group as an Assistant Emergency Coordinator.  While volunteering with Cupertino, Ken was involved with the Citizen Emergency Response Team (CERT) and the Medical Reserve Corp (MRC). These groups supply various forms of emergency and medical support for emergencies and community events.  During this same period, Ken was a senior member of the HP Medical Response Team and for 12 years served as a volunteer fire fight for Santa Clara County Fire. 

                Although chasing bits and bytes was a challenging career, Ken decoded that he would make a career change.  He was the Emergency Services Coordinator for the City of Morgan Hill for about two years, before moving the Santa Clara County Office of Emergency Management.  Here he served for ten years before retiring in 2017.

                Since retirement, Ken has returned to his roots and again is volunteering with the City of Cupertino.  His focus is on Emergency Planning, the Emergency Operations Center (EOC), and CARES.  Ken was part of the group that created the recently approved update to the Cupertino Emergency Operations Plan (EOP).

                Based on the recent experience of updating the Cupertino Emergency Operations Plan, Ken will discuss the role of a city in emergency management.  How does a city plan for events?  How does the city work with state and federal agencies?  What is the resident’s role in disaster planning?