Message from the Mayor

Dear Tulsans:

Thank you for your interest in the Tulsa Mayor’s Citizen Corps! Since the 1970s, Tulsans have been partnering together to address our community’s issues of preparedness, sustainability, mitigation and security, and we have made much progress. Moving from the nation’s most flooded city to a national model for flood mitigation is but one example. October 2006 marked the 20th anniversary of the devastating 1986 Arkansas River flood, an important reminder of the effect a natural disaster of that magnitude can have on our community.

Five years ago, the events of September 11, 2001 changed our nation, and Tulsans again rose to the challenge of adapting their hazard mitigation and disaster response plans to an “all-hazards” approach, to include a greater emphasis on manmade threats as well. In the months following, the national Citizen Corps movement was born, and Tulsa was one of the first 50 communities in the nation to establish a Citizen Corps Council and begin to get citizens involved in making their homes, businesses, churches and schools safer and more secure. Today, the Mayor’s Citizen Corps operates seven programs and involves over 1500 people in building a prepared community through volunteerism.

In the last year, the Mayor’s Citizen Corps has been involved with hurricane evacuee response at Camp Gruber, participated in exercises for special needs medical shelters, mass immunizations, and community response to a heat emergency; and provided critical support to our police and fire departments, sheriff’s office and emergency management agency.

Citizen Corps volunteers have been involved with facilitating training through Alert Neighbors, CERT and Safe & Secure to make our neighborhoods, businesses and schools safer; working with area multicultural programs through Language/Culture Bank to address the diverse needs of our community in an emergency; providing post-disaster medical care locally and nationally through Medical Reserve Corps; and assisting with long-term case management for Katrina survivors through the Tulsa Human Response Coalition.

They also continue to reach out to community partners, whether it be long-term care facilities, small businesses, homebuilders, the academic community, or human service organizations, to bring people together with the important messages of collaboration, planning and preparedness.

I encourage you to take a moment to browse this website for more details on these exciting projects that are too numerous to mention. The work of these organizations, their partners and volunteers is something about which all Tulsans can be proud. Thank you all for your great work.

Sincerely,
Kathy Taylor
Mayor, City of Tulsa