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A bunch of residents sit around a game board, a map of the Los Robles Mobile Home Park area in Novato. Their markers – each representing a unique mode of transportation – are scattered along streets and paths. A hearth has broken out nearby. One player has drawn a Chance card and asked if she would love to make use of her turn to notify a neighbor who lives a protracted driveway down.
“My heart says yes, but my head says no,” said player Trish Prokop.
Residents played an experimental emergency preparedness game designed to simulate an evacuation. The Los Robles neighborhood has 213 homes, 320 residents over the age of 55 – and one entrance and exit. Around 60 residents attended the sport night on the neighborhood's clubhouse on Monday.
“Winning isn't that exciting,” said Tom Maiorana, the sport's inventor. “It's more about learning.”
Maiorana, a professor of design on the University of California, Davis, said he developed the sport to prototype complex systems while constructing community resilience. The game is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
The aim of the sport is to get participants to take into consideration how they might behave in a stressful situation and what difficult decisions they may need to make. The simulation allows participants to explore these emergency scenarios in a protected, non-judgmental and low-risk environment.
“The real key for me when I think about these kinds of experiences is: How can we make these things that are really scary and hard to think through fun and engaging?” Maiorana said. “So that we can start to make progress on these issues in a way that helps keep people safe and motivates them to take action.”
Participants are encouraged to play as themselves, and the sport is customized to every community. Players can start with some bonus points, but only in the event that they have prepared an emergency bag, have an evacuation plan, and have signed up for the Alert Marin notification system.
Before each round, players draw a random card that mimics a real-world scenario, similar to an empty tank or a roadblock. Some of the cards are specific to every community; Maiorana meets with community leaders to learn concerning the specific challenges they face.
For example, one random card said that the ability had gone out and the neighborhood's electric gate wouldn't open. If someone on the table knew how you can open it with a Phillips screwdriver, everyone kept playing; if not, everyone skipped a round.
Some probability cards give players a bonus, often giving them extra spaces, similar to in the event that they have hardened their house or volunteered locally prior to now 12 months. Additionally, one person plays the “fire” and draws a wind and fire card at the top of every round. This causes the fireplace in the sport to grow larger or smaller, spread to recent areas, or change direction.
For player Marti Cates, the fireplace was particularly bad – the sport board was suffering from pinpoint fires, forcing some players to vary course and reevaluate their evacuation routes.
“The fires are spreading and we're not making very fast progress,” Cates said. “I found it very informative and a safe environment to scope out the terrain.”
Lynda Beth Unkeless, a resident of the neighborhood, learned about Maiorana's game when she heard on the news that Tomales residents were playing it. She thought it is likely to be of profit to Los Robles residents.
After the sport, she realized that she was not nearly as well prepared as she must have been.
“People were just very honest,” said Unkeless. “It was a confrontation with the truth.”
After the sport, Novato Assistant Fire Chief John Dicochea and Novato Police Captain Jim Correa discussed protected evacuation habits and knowledge. They also answered questions that got here up in the course of the game.
“It was fantastic,” said Katie Cartwright, president of the neighborhood association. “Everyone was engaged, which is a good sign.”
Maiorana said he’s studying whether the sport can encourage people to take motion to arrange for an emergency. He hopes it’ll help people understand the importance of short-term goals – things that might be done tomorrow, next week or next month – in constructing momentum.
“It seems to create a real drive, if you will,” Maiorana said.
Joanne Saint-Pierre, a resident of Los Robles, said the sport raised many questions and gave her an inventory of things to follow up on.
“Every time we turned over a card, there was a lot of discussion,” Saint-Pierre said.
At Prokop's table, the Notify Neighbors card sparked a broader discussion about nighttime emergencies. Several players mentioned that residents who wear hearing aids take them off at night and that individuals often turn off their cell phones once they go to bed, limiting the power to receive emergency alerts.
“This raises a lot of questions,” said Prokop. “It's good because it makes you think. For example: Yes, I can go out of the house and to the gate, but then what?”
Originally published:
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