Agency: Latino Emergency Council, Stanislaus County
Population: 514,453

Summary

The Latino Emergency Council (LEC) was formed in the 2005 to enhance communication between Latino leaders and the Stanislaus County Office of Emergency Services to improve emergency preparedness capacity in the Latino community and facilitate emergency communication in crisis situations. 
 

Stanislaus County has a 42 percent Latino population, of which 42 percent speak English less than very well and about 20 percent are only Spanish speaking. It was important to be able to effectively communicate with the Latino community during an incident. The concept was to build a formal bridge between the county Office of Emergency Services (OES) and leaders of the local Latino community.
 

Resources to Learn More

For more information on the program, contact David Jones, Director of Communications & Legislative Affairs, at (209) 652-1177 or you can visit the website http://latinoemergency.com/
 

The Rest of the Story

The nonprofit organizations El Concilio and the Hispanic Leadership Council agreed in 2005 to partner with Stanislaus County to create a formal mechanism for communicating with the Latino community.  The LEC, a community-based and volunteer run organization, has grown to include more than 25 public and private partner agencies.

The LEC has been instrumental in communications between the county OES and the Latino community in crises such as heath and cold weather incidents, floods, West Nile virus, bird flu, whooping cough and many more. The LEC has also distributed tens of thousands of pieces of emergency preparedness in Spanish, as well as assisting community members participate in a Spanish-language version of the Community Emergency Response Team training.