Contact: Jonah Weinberg - 650-508-6238

The San Mateo County Transit District will showcase one of its two emergency response buses at the City of Pacifica Disaster Preparedness Fair, which will take place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., this Saturday, Jan. 21 at the Pacifica Community Center

The bus, one of a pair of buses that were outfitted after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, is designed to function as a triage center to assist first responder agencies and serve as a mobile medical treatment unit. The converted bus was built with earthquake response in mind; however it also can be used to assist in the event of other disasters.

SamTrans keeps one bus at its operations and maintenance base in South San Francisco, and the other at its base in San Carlos. Visitors to the fair can walk through the bus and see how it has been designed to carry up to 10 injured people on stretchers, with medical personnel and limited seating for passengers, and can respond in the event of a local crisis. The first 300 visitors to the SamTrans crisis response bus will receive a SamTrans LED keychain-flashlight, in the shape of a SamTrans bus.

01/19/06 - jbw