New Emergency Services Coordinator Embraces Community

"We're really excited about what is to come," said Shannon Kendall, Loma Linda and Colton's new Emergency Service Coordinator (ESC). Kendall, who has worked in Emergency Management for 20 years, will be taking over for Debra Kreske, who has been with the Loma Linda Fire Department (LLFD) since 2010, and has now retired. Under Kreske as the ESC, she and Kendall have worked together in coordinating and instructing for the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), an all-volunteer group that will assist emergency response teams in an event of a disaster. "The quality of life after an emergency is contingent on how prepared the community was before the emergency," said Kendall, whose experience in Emergency Management includes 4 years in the Air Force. Kendall added that this belief, is why he wants to keep the spirit of community alive as he takes on the position of ESC. "Debra Kreske has been a great mentor in my transition between private emergency management programs to city and public programs," he shared. Kendall received WMD and counter-terrorism training in the Air Force. Then, starting in 1997, he developed WMD training and decontamination training for hospital environments. The 24 hour training has been commended by the Los Angeles County and The Joint Commission as being a Best Practice. "I have full confidence that Shannon will do a spectacular job in heading the CERT and HAM radio programs for both cities," Kreske said. Kendall, who also gives emergency planning presentations to businesses organizations and communities, is looking to use his experience to further develop CERT refresher courses that CERT members can choose to take once a month to continue training. "We have a 20-hour free CERT training class that we will offer for anyone interested in the free training. We are also looking to integrate HAM radio into our community training," he said. Anybody interested in these training programs should contact Kendall at (909)-799-2860. [END] Shannon Kendall is the Emergency Services Coordinator for the cities of Loma Linda and Colton. He has over 20 years of experience in emergency management. He received weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and counter-terrorism training as a member of the United States Air Force, developing training and exercises to mitigate, respond to, and /or recover the loss, theft, or seizure of national security assets. In 1997, realizing hospitals were not prepared to receive victims of a WMD release in their surrounding communities; he developed practical training program to instruct clinical and non-clinical hospital staff at Glendale Memorial Hospital in Glendale, CA in conducting mass decontamination operations. Following the events of 9/11 and while overseeing Emergency Management for 3 Providence Health and Service hospitals in Los Angeles County, he took the 8-hour practical training program he had developed and expanded it to include 16 hours of online, competency-based, and CEU-accredited training covering the Hospital Incident Command System, CBRNE agents, Communications, and all facets of conducting mass decon operations in a hospital environment. The 24 hour, hospital-based mass decontamination program he created has been commended by Los Angeles County and The Joint Commission as being a Best Practice. He is heavily involved in interoperable disaster communications projectsand disaster exercise design, implementation, and evaluation. He has been the project manager responsible for the building of a mobile command center trailer and 3 interoperable communications vans. He has also written, facilitated, and evaluated many multi-jurisdictional emergency management exercises (Drill, Table Top, Functional, and Full-scale) for hospitals to evaluate the effectiveness of their EM plans. Prior to accepting the position as the ESC for the city of Loma Linda, he was the City of Loma Linda Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) Commander and a CERT Instructor for the Loma Linda and Colton Fire Departments.