Mission & History
Mission
DART’s purpose is to assist the City of Thousand Oaks to:
- Establish, maintain, promote and educate the community with a disaster preparedness awareness program.
- Provide community service to the City of Thousand Oaks and/or the Thousand Oaks Police Department through direction of the DART Liaison.
- Recruit, train and maintain an active membership as necessary to accomplish these goals.
A Brief History of D.A.R.T.
Conceptually introduced in the Thousand Oaks area in late 1992, the DART program was adopted by the City Council in early 1993. Initial core training began in May 1993.
Today DART has more than 40 active members who meet and train monthly.
The cities of Westlake Village and Camarillo also have DART teams. The Mutual Aid Network assures that the cities will support one another in an emergency.
Thousand Oaks DART Timeline
- September 15, 1992: initial introduction of “Disaster Assistance Response Team” (DART) at Thousand Oaks City Hall meeting
- January 12, 1993: City Council began funding DART. ($8,000 total between 1993-95. Funding for FY 95/96 increased to $10,000)
- April 14, 1993: The first DART organizational meeting of citizens was held.
- May 13, 1993: The first DART training were held classes for 30 members.
- August 5, 1993: First DART Class graduation.
- January 20, 1994: DART bylaws enacted, and board officers installed.
- January 1, 1996: The City transferred administrative control of DART to the Thousand Oaks Police Department. (Funded from the City of Thousand Oaks)
- June 17, 1996: VCSO establishes a DART Mutual Aid Plan (Organization, Authority, Functions, etc.)
CERT / DART Historical Overview:
The CERT concept was developed and implemented by the Los Angeles City Fire Department in 1985. The Whittier Narrows earthquake in 1987 underscored the area-wide threat of a major disaster in California. October 1889 -Loma Prieta Earthquake (City of Los Gatos). These disasters, confirmed the need for training civilians to meet their immediate needs. CERT became a national program in 1993.
Prior to the promulgation of CERT programs, the VC Sheriff’s Office assisted and recruited a DART team in the City of Camarillo (established between March 1990-February 1992). The initial DART curriculum was locally developed and provided by Sheriff, OES, and Fire training staff. After the advent of CERT program, the county coordinators determined that the basic 24 hour CERT training did not cover some topics considered important by DART members. Subsequently the county coordinators developed a curriculum to increase the level of training for volunteers to become certified as DART. They had two levels of designation following ICS type designators, Dart I and DART II, for a total of 32 hours beyond the 24 hours of basic CERT. DART members are considered state Disaster Service Workers.