Mira Mesa CERT Newsletter

Good morning, here is the News:

Street Fair Sign-up—The Mira Mesa Street Fair is Saturday, September 15.  This is going away the best recruiting opportunity for our Mira Mesa Team.  What makes it work is the amount of action we can get going around the booth with interactive demos.  These demos serve us in two ways; they call attention to what we do, and give the impression that we are a local organization of dedicated volunteers (which in fact we are, so it works out).  Bottom line, the more people we have, the better it works.  This year we will do cribbing demos again, and log rolling, so dummy gets another workout.  I think we will add rescue carries, still working on that.  Many have requested wound care also, if we can fit that in we will.  Once again those amazing people in the Mira Mesa High School Air Force ROTC are going to help us out.  This will be fun.  For your two-hour commitment, you get to be part of a truly great hometown event, talk to really great people, and get some serious practice in on fundamental rescue skills.  Don't have quite two hours to spare?  We can work something out.  Don't really want to do the demos?  It's not required.

There is no sign-up for this on the website.  Drop me a note, let me know when you can make it (morning or afternoon is good enough), and if there is a particular demo with which you'd like to get involved.  Please help me to make our Team bigger and stronger.  We really need it.

Animal Rescue CE—We just got word of this, The Humane Society is sponsoring a class on preparing for disasters when you have pets.  This is good for Continuing Education.    Check it out:

http://www.sdhumane.org/site/PageServer?pagename=prg_HappyHour

Note that there is a $12 fee, and they are holding it this Thursday, two days from today.  Only the Preparedness class listed first is approved, not the First Aid for Dogs and Cats.    Those of you who just got the DSW card, time to start working on your renewal.  This isn't as far out there as you might think, we have a LOT of pets here in Mira Mesa.  Sometimes in a catastrophe these pets get separated from their human families.  WE might have to deal with them.  I don't think you need to have a pet to attend this class, they should be able to figure out why you are there if you are CERT.

All for this week.  Stay cool.

-Steve

Let's discuss CERT and Disaster Prep!

Hi CERT members!

Please join the open discussion of CERT procedures, family and workplace disaster procedures at the Back Channel CERT blog (http://backchannelcert.blogspot.com).  Current articles cover home (or elsewhere) evacuation preparation techniques and active shooter information.

Your thoughts and suggestions are welcomed.  However, the blog is moderated so don't worry about any "flame-wars" spoiling your experience.

TJ Walters

Mira Mesa CERT Newsletter

Good morning, here is the news:

Team Meeting—This Thursday, 9 August 2012, 6:00-7:00pm at the Senior Center.  Weather the way it is, we might be enjoying the evening outside, but I don't want to move it to the rally point at this late date, we'll lose some people. Our main topic will be preparation for the coming fire season.  At least one veteran of the 2007 deployment will be there to share experiences.  We'll discuss putting together a three-day Go-bag, essential for any CERT, and the differences from our perspective as CERT between a progressive disaster and sudden catastrophe.  I hope to see you all there.

Telephone Tree Volunteers—We're still looking for one more volunteer to help us during a callout in alerting our Team.   This isn't a big deal, you can do it from your cell telephone wherever you happen to be.  Basically you will get a short message from me or Jennifer, or someone above us in our chain of command.  You will need to relay that message to about eight people on your Team, then follow those same instructions yourself.  Simple, but critical.  If you can do this for us, please drop me a note.

Street Fair Signup—A lot of our new graduates first met up with us at the Mira Mesa Street Fair.  This year the Fair will be held on Saturday, 15 September.   The hours are usually 10-5, with the bulk of the crowd showing up mid-day or a little after.  They'll have heavy earth-moving equipment, police SWAT tanks, bomb-sniffing robots, this isn't your usual Street Fair.  Thos of you who helped out last year and remember the great folks from the Mira Mesa High School Air Force ROTC program will be glad to know that we've already hooked up with them, and they will be sending their usual enthusiastic crew down to work with us.  This year we'll do the log-roll/litter exercise we did with them last year, and I think we will show them some basic rescue carries they can practice with each other (the Dummy can take a break).  We might get them dressed up in our practice PPE, they might as well suffer along with.  We will need help in staffing our booth and trailer, and we'll need a LOT of help with some of our demos.  Depending on how many people we get, we'll do  cribbing practice on Dummy in the street in front of our booth.  EVERYONE who wants to get in some cribbing practice should be able to do so.  Last year we only had enough people to do the cribbing in the middle of the day, but we discovered an interesting fact; a good cribbing exercise will draw a crowd away from bomb-sniffing robots and tanks.  So we want to do it more.  And we need your help.  Shifts are usually two hours, but we'll work with you on that.  Drop me a note and let me know if you prefer morning or evening.  If you have a particular CERT skill you want to practice, let me know that too, we'll try to set something up.  I really hope to see everyone there this is going away our best recruiting opportunity of the year in Mira Mesa.  We need to grow as a Team, and we need your help to do it.  Join us.

All for this week.  Battalion News tomorrow I think.  Questions, comments, you know how to find me.

-Steve