Community Meeting, Cachagua Community Center 9/3/08...

September 3, 2008, about 6:00 pm...

The Community Meeting at Cachagua Community Center this evening, was in the overall, positive and fruitful.

Hosted by Congressman Sam Farr and 5th District Supervisor Dave Potter, the meeting, drew a raft of agency representatives, including Monterey County Sheriff Mike Kanalakis and his staff, the CHP, MoCo OES, Building, Environmental Health, Natural Resources Conservation Service, CalFire, Cachagua and Carmel Valley Fire, the U.S. Forest Service, SPCA others.

I, for one, was pleased to see the Sheriff present, as, I think, were many residents, since more than a few were non-plussed about the performance of the Monterey County Sheriff's deputies, and Chief Kanalakis himself, during the evacuation events.

John Russo (shown in the picture, above), Greg Scherman, (the unofficial "Mayor of Jamesburg") and a number of other residents aired their experiences, points of view and displeasure; but, ultimately - and this is the encouraging part - many agreed that it is time for and active group of residents to organize in order to identify resources, lines of communication, work with local representatives and authorities and vie for a seat at the Incidnet Command table, when the next disaster strike Jamesburg Cachagua.

For their part, agency representatives appeared to be willing to assist in any way they can.

If you wish to be a part of forming and developing a Community Emergency Response Team, please call (831) 659-2320 or email me: kellyeo@mac.com

Our thanks to all the agency representatives in attendance, and to Sam Farr, Dave Potter and Kathleen Lee, and John Russo for helping to put together this meeting; and, of course, many thanks to our good friends and neighbors in the Cachagua-Jamesburg area.

Audio from the meeting can be found HERE and on KUSP's website.