Cisco Tactical Operations Receives Red Cross Award

Sometimes people do good deeds and the deed goes unnoticed.

But at the 5th Annual Heroes Celebration Thursday afternoon at the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, the Silicon Valley Chapter of the Red Cross recognized a handful of good Samaritans, the innovative efforts of a company and the emergency preparedness of a city.

“Today is about gratitude, the gratitude to be associated with our volunteers, staff, donors,” said Silicon Valley Chapter CEO Barb Larkin. “Nobody expects a disaster. When our volunteers show up, we receive a lot of gratitude back. We are you. The Red Cross is everybody in this community.”

Two committees selected the honorees from nearly 50 people nominated throughout Santa Clara County, said Cynthia Shaw, chapter spokeswoman.

Cisco TacOps

Milpitas-based Cisco Systems Tactical Operations received the Innovative Preparedness Heroes Award for a group of employees trained to respond to natural disasters and other emergencies.

TacOps, as it is referred to, consists of a series of emergency response tools, from mobile kits to a fleet of communications vehicles.

During the San Bruno explosion, Cisco deployed a Network Emergency Response Vehicles (NERVs) to the scene where they worked on scene for 72 hours. The team of 6 to 8 people, certified in Incident Command System, rotated in shifts.

"We're like the extreme end of tech support," he said. The equipment includes voice data, radio and video capabilities. The NERV is the cornerstone of the fleet, and is not manufactured as a line item, nor is it for sale.

"Many companies in the Silicon Valley often times give cash" for disasters, said Rakesh Bharania, network consulting engineer. "We actually have equipment and personnel," he said.  Employees are able to volunteer and be trained in disaster response where they can be deployed in the future missions.

Bharania is one of the faces behind TacOps. Altogether there are nine full-time staff, including a manager, operations coordinator and engineers. They are located in Cisco's Silicon Valley and North Carolina locations.

"We work as one team" to coordinate responses, said Bharania, who said the advantage is that they can pull resources from the east or west coast, depending on where disaster strikes.

TacOps is involved locally with the Santa Clara County Office of Emergency Services, statewide as a mutual aid resource recognized by California Emergency Management Agency and CAL FIRE. 

But TacOps has an international reach as well. Mobile communication kits have been deployed to Japan and the Haiti earthquake, said Bharania.

Since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Cisco's program disaster response began to evolve, he said. "In 2010, the big watershed event was our response to Haiti earthquake," he said, "2010 was really the transformational year for us."

Other awards

The City of Palo Alto received the Innovative Preparedness Heroes Award because of how the city has gone to extreme measures to ensure the safety of its residents and employees in the event a disaster hits. Palo Alto has made disaster preparedness a strategic priority.

Seven people received the Good Samaritan Heroes Awards.

Two Mountain View men, Juan Gomez and Josh Cottrell rushed to perform CPR on a , a Los Altos resident, who experienced a severe heart attack in April 2010.

The two staffers acted immediately according to their training.

“I felt that what we did, we just did our job,” Gomez said on the video. “We did what we were trained to do.”

San Jose residents James Myers, Sergio Jimenez and Justo Magana-Garcia rescued a driver from a car engulfed in flames.

Robert Bentson, a Gilroy resident and son of a firefighter, heard an explosion and then silence. After no emergency vehicles arrived, he drove to the scene and helped another man rescued a neighbor from a burning building last New Year’s Eve.

“I didn’t really think about it other than to help him and to help whoever was in the unit,” Bentson said on the video. “I just hope someone would do the same for me and my family.”

Bentson said he got the resident out with “about a minute to spare” and didn’t think about it.

Around 500 community members 500, supporting companies, sponsors and volunteers joined the luncheon Thursday to raise money for Red Cross efforts.

"The stories were amazing. You don't plan for an emergency and often time people would ignore people in distress,” said  Margaret Abe-Koga. “These people stepped up to save someone's life. They are unsung heroes. Makes me proud to have so many in our city."

Mike Tyler, a bakery manager at the Mountain View , helped perform CPR on a man who suffered a heart attack in the store last November.

"It's a little bit overwhelming and a little bit uncomfortable," said Tyler after the event about all of the recognition he’s received. The Mountain View City Council honored him last year. "It seems that I'm getting a lot of attention for doing something you should just do."

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