Good morning, here is the news:
******MIRA MESA***********
Training Hours due—Please turn in the details of any training you took in February to me as soon as you can. I can accept submissions up until tomorrow close of business.
Team Meeting— Next team meeting is Thursday, 10 March. Please let me know as soon as possible if you plan to attend We will start at 5:30 again. End at 6:30, or shortly thereafter. This is an FRS radio test. You will start from your residence or other location you have identified to me. I will establish a controlled net at 5:30. After my announcement, you will call in with your call sign and location. If you do not hear the announcement, listen at least five minutes. If you hear someone else responding to the net announcement, try to communicate with them, and have them relay your call sign and location. If you cannot hear anyone after five minutes, drive approximately half-way to the rally point, pull off in a safe location, and try again. Please, do NOT operate your radio in a moving vehicle if you are driving. When you get to the rally point, we will map your location when you first joined the net, and try to get some idea of our coverage.
*****BATTALION 5*********
Training Hours are Due—If you have not turned in hours for February, please try to do so right away.
Continuing Education, Incident Command System Online Training—FEMA's Emergency Management Institute (EMI) offers a series of online self study courses for learning the Incident Command System. The following courses are now required for all San Diego CERT.
100b
200
700a
704
800B
You can access these courses here:
Take all five courses and you can receive 2 CE credits. So you can satisfy an entire year's CE requirements online. Pretty good deal. Here are some other details:
· You have all year to do this (although you probably want to take them all fairly close to each other and soon). I have not seen a lot of certificates yet, please don't wait on this just because it's not due right away.
· If you took any of the equivalent courses since 1 January 2005, they will count toward your requirement if you can produce the certificate you received. You will not get credit for volunteer hours or a CE for courses you already took, but those courses will help satisfy the five-course requirement .
Send certificates for completed courses to your Team Leader. You might want to accumulate all five and send them in a batch.
St. Patrick's Day Parade—Saturday, March 12, which is coming up fast. Registration closes this Saturday at 5:00. This one has a lot of moving parts. Our partner for this is the San Diego Firefighter's Emerald Society:
The are hosting a breakfast that either begins at 5:30 according to their web site, or 6:00 according to our flier. I'll get this cleared up for next week's blast. It appears that there is no charge for breakfast, I'll find out about that too, and whether or not we have to register some place (I don't know a whole lot about this, do I?). We do know that breakfast is at the Hook and Ladder Museum 1572 Columbia Street. The Emerald Society appears to believe that you somehow become part Irish when you become a Firefighter, and who is to say they are wrong? They have a bagpipe and drum band, I presume they will make an appearance at the parade, along with a bunch of Firefighters and trucks. If you don't make the breakfast, staging starts at 9:30, on 6th street between Juniper and Ivy. Plan to get there early if you want to park anywhere near there. March in a Parade, Bagpipes, fire trucks and engines, what's not to love about this event? Go to the web site to sign up:
Occasional Rant—Cut my finger this last weekend in a painting project (you cut yourself painting? Really, it's not that good a story). Anyway, went rummaging in the bathroom for some stick on bandages (the kind we don't use in CERT). Found some fingertip bandages I must have purchased when the first Bush was president. They came apart when I opened them. Obviously my home first aid supplies need updating, how about yours? Are they roasting nicely in that little steel box you bought? Here's a clue, if they actually came in a steel box (not plastic) you probably want to open that up and take a look. Be emotionally prepared to pitch the whole thing. Replace your kit, don't count on raiding the stuff in your Go-Pack, it's a different mission, and you need that stuff where it is. I like to have fingertip/knuckle bandages around, some good waterproof strips, fresh peroxide and good splinter tweezers (I like Tweezerman Slant style you can get at most beauty supply stores, haven't seen anything better).
That's all for this week, questions, comments, drop your Team Leader a note.
-Steve
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