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Subcommittees

EERI SESI Subcommittees are open to any EERI member, and are tasked to achieve various actions and activities of the program. Each Subcommittee will be lead by a Subcommittee Chair. If you are interested in joining a subcommittee, please email the associated Chair listed below.

Safety Screening, Inventory, and Evaluation of Schools

Chair: Ken Goettel

Members: Lizzie Blaisdell, David Bonowitz, Silvana Cobos (staff lead), Phil Gould, Jeremiah LeGrue, Heidi Tremayne

Charge: Facilitate and encourage implementation of risk reduction measures by developing and helping to carry out stepwise screening methodologies to identify school buildings with the highest seismic risk efficiently while minimizing the effort and expense for school districts.

Products:

Classroom Education and Outreach

Chair: Eddie Vega

Members: Email Silvana Cobos (silvana@eeri.org) to join!

Charge: Use education in the classroom to create an ongoing dialog with parents, teachers, and administrators and to develop advocates for earthquake school safety. Bring together EERI regional and student chapters to collaborate on delivering the activities and serving as expert resources for stakeholders.

Visit the Classroom Education and Outreach website for more information

Tsunami Mitigation for Schools

Chair: Chair pending, Yumei Wang and Heidi Tremayne are the current contacts

Members: Veronica Cedillos, Greg Deierlein, Lori Dengler, Doug Dougherty, Lesley Ewing, Hermann Fritz, Sue Graves, Karen Izumoto, Manuel Lugo, Kevin Miller, Cindy Pridmore, Jay Raskin, Kevin Richards, Althea Rizzo, Ian Robertson, Zahraa Saiyed, John Schelling, Jeri Siegel, Tom Tobin, Heidi Tremayne, Yumei Wang, Jay Wilson, Rick Wilson, Harry Yeh

Charge: Support schools with tsunami hazard by provide them access to experts and sharing best practices for tsunami risk mitigation.

Products:

Safety, Advocacy, and Messaging
(now including the Code Updating and Improvements Subcommittee)

Co-Chair: Rob Jackson and Christine Beyzaei

Members: Lucy Arendt, Veronica Cedillos, Silvana Cobos (staff lead), Guillermo Diaz-Fanas, Bill Holmes, Ayse Hortacsu, Mike Mahoney (ex officio), Praveen Malhotra, Sissy Nikolaou, Gary Lee Patterson, John Sherstobitoff, Alissa Tan, Heidi Tremayne, Barry Welliver, Ivan Wong

Charge: Bridge the communication gap between technical professionals and non-technical partners and stakeholders interested in earthquake risk reduction for schools. Also advocate for code improvements, refinement and/or implementation practices that will enhance school safety and use after major earthquakes.

To initiate action at a local grassroots level, SESI has developed a template PowerPoint that can be presented by EERI members and other school safety advocates to parent organizations, school boards, community leaders and decision-makers, and local and state agencies.  The purpose of the PowerPoint is to describe the school safety issues of the local community. The PowerPoint will introduce EERI and SESI, describe what the specific earthquake hazard and school vulnerability issues are in the community, what can happen in an earthquake, which types of buildings are most vulnerable (such as URM), the impact and risk of nonstructural component failures, disruption to the community due to damaged schools, and what steps can be taken to improve school safety.  SESI can provide resources and assistance to any school safety advocate. It is our hope that EERI members and school safety advocates who are aware of school safety issues in their local community will use this PowerPoint to initiate meaningful communication with the appropriate decision-makers. Once that communication link has been established, a core group of advocates can assist in moving the process forward with assistance from SESI.

SESI Promoting Safe Buildings for Our Schoolchildren – Powerpoint Template [PPT]