May 27-28, 2011 (Friday & Saturday)

Valley Center CERT participated  in Western Days on May 27-28. We had a booth at the Community Center Saturday, and we won the Best Emergency Vehicle Trophy in the parade. Valley Center CERT members also assisted in monitoring the parade area. Valley Center CERT was asked to assist with parking as well.

During the parade, a 12-year old participant fell off his waveboard and was ran over by a vintage firetruck, which was also participating in the parade. The accident happened directly in front of Valley Center CERT member Kathy Ames, who immediatly reported the situation to our Incident Command Center. The information was passed to the Valley Center Fire Dept. EMTs. The EMTs arrived within 90 seconds of the accident, thanks in large to Valley Center CERT's teamwork in passing the information along in an efficient manner. The Valley Center Fire Protection District sent this to us in response (see below)

But wait! There's more...

April 16, 2011 (Saturday)

On April 16, 2011, Valley Center CERT, in conjunction with VC LAST, held a drill.
Following are comments from Jim Courter K6MHY, President of Valley Center CERT and President of Greater Valley Center Fire Safe Council concerning a drill held by Valley center CERT on April 16, 2011..

   

    Most of the debriefing comments from the drill pointed to a need for better organization of our field deployment command structure, and for better knowledge of our equipment.  As a result of careful consideration of these comments, and the discussion at the meeting Thursday night with staff from CERT, LAST, SDSO, DAS and SDHS, we will be implementing the following program.

 

    VC CERT will organize itself under an ICS command structure. This will include pre-qualifying individuals for key positions, cross training each of them for several positions, with enough redundancy ( ie extra folks qualified for each position) so there will be a good probability enough people  from the pool will be available at any given event to create a command staff. Planning for this will begin immediately, with the operations planning committee ( the folks who planned the drill last for Saturday ) starting by doing some homework on ICS for the next week. Starting May 2 the committee will again be meeting every Monday evening at 6:30 PM at the Sheriff's Station to establish goals, determine what positions in the ICS tree we will use, and find people who will volunteer for those positions. The overall goal will be to have a functional system in place in time for our Western Days deployment on May 28 so we can give the system a functional test then.

        We will institute a training program to get our volunteers more familiar with basic ICS and the operational structure that we develop for our team, which will probably deviate some from the norm. Basic ICS is part of our academy, but most of our folks have forgotten how it works. Those who want to fill management positions will receive some additional training. The details of the program will be worked out by the operations committee in conjunction with the education committee.

    We will institute a training program on the trailers so that our volunteers are familiar with their contents and what it takes to move them safely. This may involve some evening training sessions outside our normal training schedule.

    We will develop some signage for various functions in camp, and check lists for the positions. These can be generated in a computer and printed out on regular printer paper and laminated. Bob Bishop had offered use of the Sheriff's laminator, we provide the envelopes.

    Kathy Ames is looking at purchasing colored ball cap hats for those in management positions to wear so that they will stand out from the rank and file, and to make them easier to find.

    We will work to educate our ham radio community in the operation of all our radio types, including programming functions.

This will require some special training sessions.

 

    The issue of CERT / LAST coordination was discussed. The suggestion from DAS was to operate the two units as branches under Operations when in the same camp, if at separate locations each would have their own IC and command structure. Even if the camps are separate, logistical functions such as Communications can be detached from CERT in support of LAST activities, also CERT volunteers can be detailed out as support staff for helping with the care of evacuated animals. These recommendations make sense and will be implemented . To this end it is recommended we have a training session on the CERT Animal Care Module as well as encourage CERT volunteers to train with LAST.

 

    The request for scheduling a repeat drill for the end of June was made by Chief Wallace.  It was found that the date tentatively selected, June 25, conflicts with the ARRL Field Day national Ham Radio exercise, which a good number of our radio staff will be participating in. The previous weekend has a conflict for many of the LAST volunteers, and the following one is the July 4h weekend where we may be deploying in support of the fireworks. The following weekends have conflicts also, so we are now looking at July 23.

    The site will be once again the lot at the corner of Lilac Rd and Valley Center Rd.

    For this drill, the suggestion has been made that we run some activities for CERT and LAST. Under the plan being considered, CERT would combine the exercise with the graduation drill for the June academy. A possible scenario for this would be for the new volunteers to gather at the Lilac Rd   field with the general membership for check - in and swearing in, and then be "deployed" with the rest of the CERT volunteers to another site, possibly the Mormon Church, for a standard CERT drill.  At the conclusion of activities there, they would return for debriefing at the Lilac Rd field.

At the same time, LAST would run an exercise to "rescue"  animals and move them to the Vaqueros' corrals at the Lilac Rd field.  Comments on this would be useful to the planners.

    It has been noted that running the new recruits  through a drill like this would eliminate the time for the revue, cribbing and fire suppression modules that we have normally done the morning of the drill. With an extra week in the academy schedule that this would provide, it is thought that a revue could be done on the week previous to the drill, and cribbing  and the fire suppression module could be done then also or on the day of the drill. We have to give this some more thought.

 

One final note is that I would like to see the debriefing comments summary prepared by Donna Dyson posted to the  VCCERT website for viewing by the group at large.

 

    I would like to sincerely thank our agencies ( VCFPD, CalFire, SDSO, DAS, SDHS ) for their support and  encouragement in this effort.

 

 

Jim Courter K6MHY

President, Valley Center CERT

President, Greater Valley Center Fire Safe Council