This is one of many articles in the Mercury’s 2026 Climate Issue. Find a print copy here, subscribe to get a copy mailed to you here, and if you’re feeling generous and want to keep these types of articles coming, support us here.—eds.
When shit hits the fan, the first responders will most likely be your neighbors.
That’s the idea behind the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management’s (PBEM) efforts to organize and train everyday Portlanders to respond in emergency situations.
“First responders and [government] aid are extremely important, but in the direct aftermath of a disaster, 99% of people are rescued by their neighbors,” Jeremy Van Keuren, PBEM’s community preparedness manager, told the Mercury.
If professional fire fighters, law enforcement, and FEMA can’t get to you right away, someone on your street just might help stop the bleeding, offer food and water, or make a safety plan until the professionals arrive.
Van Keuren works in the city’s Emergency Operations Center, a small fortress in a sleepy community just east of I-205, in the shadow of Kelly Butte. Inside is a massive open office, with an unlit jumbotron in the middle of the room. Things are quiet most of the time, but in the case of a major disaster, the building would transform into a communication hub between essential government services.
Back in the 1980s, cities across the United States began formally bolstering volunteer corps on the neighborhood level through programs called Community Emergency Response Teams (CERTs). The movement to organize community volunteers came in the aftermath of a devastating 1985 earthquake in Mexico City, which killed tens of thousands of people.
Portland’s Neighborhood Emergency Team (NET) program came in 1994. With more than 1,500 active volunteers, Portland’s program is one of the largest of its kind in the country.
After NET volunteers sign up for the program, they take a 28-hour training course, offered through PBEM and local first responders in multiple languages, including Spanish—culminating in a mock disaster scenario. The program also offers a litany of free training sessions to expand volunteers’ skills, including using private radio systems, medical responses, deescalation, using a fire extinguisher, and responding to heat exhaustion.
Van Keuren attributes Portland’s large CERT membership to several factors. The city boasts a high level of civil engagement, well-organized neighborhood associations, and an outdoorsy, adventurous populace. There’s also the fear of “The Big One,” the mega-earthquake in the Cascadia Subduction Zone that could hit the Pacific Northwest sometime in the next 50 years, causing serious destruction.
“After a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake, we are not expecting [federal] help for two weeks,” Van Keuren said. “We train [our volunteers] to anticipate that kind of scenario. One of the benefits of training in that way is that if we’re prepared for an earthquake of that magnitude, we’re ready for all sorts of other disasters.”
These disasters are often related to climate change. It’s been five years since the unprecedented 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome killed more than 60 people in Portland, and more than 100 across Oregon. Most of the people who died were living alone, without air conditioning, in low income/multifamily housing, and in areas of the city lacking shade. The heat dome was an especially dire example of the kinds of climate emergencies Portland now has to grapple with, with increasing frequency. To survive crises of that magnitude, it’s important to know your neighbors.
“The most important thing you can do is just knowing who your neighbors are. Number two is to store food and water,” Van Keuren said.
Carolyn Manke, 51, a member of the Cully and Concordia NET, told the Mercury most people she talks to aren’t scared of The Big One—their fears are about more mundane emergencies.
“They’re scared of losing power, AC, and heating. Just regular power losses can mean their front doors don’t work or wheelchair users can’t use the elevator,” Manke said.
Shows like Doomsday Preppers and pieces of post-apocalypse pop culture have taught people that disasters trigger the worst of human behavior. Many have the belief that when things go wrong in the world, the strangers around you will resort to violence and looting. If the volunteers in NET are any indication, the opposite seems to be more accurate.
“Everybody’s afraid of looters and there’s this impression that when a disaster occurs it’s going to be like Mad Max,” Van Keuren said. “But generally speaking, we found that communities really come together to start helping each other when things go wrong.…We want to be better prepared, and have more skills, because people want to help. Not just themselves, but their neighbors.”
And NET volunteers aren’t waiting for The Big One to spring into action, either. In 2025, NETs were deployed for over 3,000 hours of volunteer labor in the field. They assisted at cooling stations during heat waves, maintained perimeters of downed power lines during outages in extreme winter storms, and helped people evacuate during fires.
It can be difficult to avoid feeling dispirited when it comes to human-caused climate change, with dangerous weather now touching all of our lives. NET volunteers say it helps to be prepared.
“It’s easy to get caught up reading so much bad news and feel powerless,” Manke says. “But I do think people are more resilient than we often think. Programs like this can give us skills, but also introduces us to people we can rely on and work together with. When we build that community resiliency, it makes me feel like we can make it.”
