Cargo Bike Disaster Relief Trials

From Xtracycle:

Xtracycle, the progenitor of the American cargo bike revolution, is bringing the Disaster Relief Trials (DRT) to San Francisco.

On October 19 at 11am, come to the Presidio (Main Post Lawn, Montgomery Street) to see what a cargo bike can do.  We will be commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake by displaying a fresh approach to citizen-led disaster relief.  Cargo bikes have the greatest power to affect relief in dense urban environments like San Francisco.

DRT SF is being organized by Scott Perkins, the Neighborhood Emergency Response Team (NERT) leader for the Presidio Neighborhood.  Scott is a dyed-in-the-wool family cargo biker who is excited to show off cargo bikes to emergency managers and neighbors alike.

San Francisco’s NERT program was developed as a reaction to the 1989 LomaPrieta earthquake: a program to empower citizens to address local disaster recovery needs when first responders are fully absorbed by severe emergencies.  There are other fire department-facilitated citizen response teams throughout the country: elswhere known as NET or CERT or similar.  As the DRT movement is focused on promoting neighbor-to-neighbor assistance, these citizen-involvement programs might be one of the best in-roads for making cargo bikes a conventional response tool.  A DRT competiton will highlight the possibilities