Tag: neighborhood CERT

At Christmas, some of my neighbors bake cookies and deliver them to the local fire station. They are duly thanked. But last month, our fire department showed their appreciation in a whole different way.

They used our streets and houses for training!

Getting familiar with our community

Non-standard hydrant

First Responders always have to get used to our community. It has narrow streets and smaller-than-regulation fire hydrants, not to mention an impossible house numbering system.

So last month, when they had a recruit who needed training, they gave us a call.

Could our neighborhood CERT group host a training exercise?

Well, of course we could!

With only two days’ notice, we pulled together a team, sent out a flyer to everyone warning them to stay out of the way, and when the engines pulled in on a Friday morning, we were ready.

• Our CERT member posted at the gate saw them enter and notified the entire team via hand-held radio.
• Block by block, turn by turn, we tracked them and reported in.
• When they arrived at the “subject house,” our team members set up a traffic management system, meant to keep residents’ cars – and residents on foot — from getting tangled up in the hoses.

Traffic hazard

Things went well! The recruit passed his test (locating the hydrant, attaching the hoses, pulling hoses around the corner and across the street, etc.). Our traffic management proceeded without incident, and radio communications worked perfectly. (One of our members acted as Net Control, accompanying the Incident Commander in a golf cart.)

At the end of an 90 minutes, the fire department had rolled everything up and were gone.

Then, later that same day, they called to ask if they could come back the following week and do it again!

Benefits of working together

Working with our local fire station crew this way has so many benefits.

First, they learn more about the neighborhood and will obviously be able to respond more quickly and confidently to the next emergency.

Second, they got to see our CERT team in action – and they voiced their admiration for the way we were organized and for the help we gave them.

Finally, we got to know those crew members personally, and they got to know us. Nothing can substitute for this personal connection.

Plans for future training exercises

Now that we have had this experience, we will be inviting other stations to take advantage of our “training facility” when they can.

It’s a way to position our CERT group positively in the eyes of the First Responder community, and it gives us a way to reinforce our preparedness message to our neighbors, too. Not to mention the all-important radio practice!

Have you ever hosted a training in YOUR community?  Who initiated contact? How did it go? Let us readers know!

Virginia
Your Emergency Plan Guide Team

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A Fantastic Resource for your Neighborhood CERT Group

I try to keep feeding you with real-life stories about our neighborhood CERT group – what we do to attract volunteers, what works, what doesn’t. This is another chapter in the on-going saga.

And this one is a real success story.

Visit from the Fire Department

Last fall, at the first meeting after the summer break, our Homeowners Association invited the local fire station to send over some firefighters to talk about what to expect in the case of an earthquake. A big quake had hit Sonoma, in Northern California, just two months earlier, so everyone remembered the fires and the devastation, and was eager to talk about it anyway.

Slide Show

Since I was in charge of the agenda as President of the HOA (!), I took advantage of the situation.

First, I prepared a slide show for the fire department.

• I used current news photos interspersed with a few other choice examples of failed foundations, street collapses and trashed home interiors.
• I included special slides customized for our type of housing, our age group, etc.
• I customized the slide show with THEIR logo and contact info.

The plan worked perfectly.

Result: Over 100 residents of our community showed up for the meeting.

While they came to see the firefighters, not to hear about emergency preparedness from our CERT group, they got our message!

Training session for the Fire Department

Then last week, the Captain of that local station called us, and asked if they could hold a training session for new recruits here in our community!

I’ll be writing more about how the training session went. The point of this Advisory — if you reach out to your local fire station, you are likely to get an enthusiastic response.

Make it easy for them

Response from your local fire department is likely to be even more enthusiastic if you –

• Take the time to create an engaging and useful presentation for them – and give them the chance to edit and practice it. (As it turned out, the Captain we had been working with wasn’t able to make the meeting, so he passed the slide show on to a colleague and HE became our speaker. Smooth.)
• Put them on the meeting agenda right up front, so they don’t have to wait through any business.
• Provide a question and answer period. By and large, firefighters are eager to educate the public, and this is a great opportunity for them. Our crew brought handouts for everyone.

Naturally, planning with firefighter teams is tricky, because wherever they are, their radios are blipping and buzzing, and they could be called away at any moment.

And the main challenge, as always, is pulling together a large enough crowd to justify the crew taking time away from the station.

In our case, we have a community that is used to assembling for a monthly HOA meeting. You may need to combine forces with a local school or local church to find the right facility and attract enough people. But if you can, I think you’ll find both the crowd and the firefighters to be appreciative of your efforts.

And ultimately, lives may be saved. That’s really the point of it all!

Action Item: Set up a presentation from your local fire department for your group. Let us know how it goes!

Virginia Nicols
Your Emergency Plan Guide Team

Are you trying to build, or maintain, a local CERT group? Let me know in an email, and I’ll be sure you get all my tips for organizing.