Reminders and Updates on Various Topics

1. PMVFD Holiday Party – Friday, 10 Dec at 1800 at El Rey Mexican Restaurant, 16220 Rte 76, Pauma Valley.  Please RSVP Tricia Lucia at ladibug309@aol.com (also in the CC line above).  All CERT members are invited, and there’s a “White Elephant” gift exchange – bring a funny gift of $10 or less in value if you want to participate.
2. Wildland Urban Interface fire preparation – I’ve placed two presentations from the October County CERT Exercise on the website ( https://sites.google.com/site/pmvfdcert/Home ) - they have great detailed information on how individuals and families can better prepare themselves for fires.
3. Red Book to Recovery – once you lose your home in a disaster, what do you do next?  The Red Guide to Recovery ( www.theredguidetorecovery.com ) has step by step and situation by situation guidelines for what to do, and what to avoid (unscrupulous contractors, for example).  An e-version is also available on our website.  We have hardcopies at the station that CERT may be handing to disaster victims.  Even better, review it before you lose your home , so that you know what you’ll need to do, and can be better prepared.
4. ICE on your cell phones – when paramedics find you unconscious at an accident, who on your cell phone should they call?  They look for your “ICE” entries – In Case of Emergency.  So, enter “ICE 1”, or “ICE Spouse”, or “ICE Work”, for whoever you want contacted if you can’t speak for yourself.  Thanks to Dave Anderson for bringing this to my attention.
5. Reverse 911/ Alert San Diego Registration – while your landlines are already registered for Reverse 911, your cell phones, internet numbers, and e-mail is not.  Go to www.readysandiego.org to register on these other communication systems for notification.  I just updated my information in about 90 seconds.
6. Search and Rescue opportunity – Sgt. Don Parker from San Diego Search and Rescue (part of the Sheriff’s Dept) is looking for more volunteers to help with county SAR events.  Many CERT members wanted to help during recent events, most notably the Amber Dubois and Chelsea King abductions and murders.  However, CERT does not provide the specialized training to allow us to be activated to help in these situation.  If you go through the training with SDSAR, then you can respond to their activations and participate.  There are various levels of training and participation available, and their next academy starts in January.  Participation with SDSAR does not affect your CERT membership.  If you’re interested, there’s information at www.sdsar.org, or you can e-mail Sgt. Parker at don.parker@sdsheriff.org.
7. CERT San Diego County Communications Plan – OES CERT is trying to organize a county-wide communications plan, specifically to set up HAM frequencies and procedures for use during disasters.  If you’re interested in participating on the committee, let me know and I’ll submit your name.  
8. General reminder – CERT members are not First Responders, and we should not be going into areas where we need specialized protective clothing.  So, none of us need flashing lights on our vehicles to respond to activations (we should drive safely, at the speed limit, so we don’t create additional accidents), nor should we be wearing yellow turn-out gear (like the firefighters wear) when we’re performing our duties.
9. Next CERT Meeting – Saturday, January 8th (unless you REALLY want to meet on New Year’s Day!)
   

I’ve also posted this e-mail as an “Update” on the PMVFD CERT Webpage for alternative viewing and reminders.

The references I mentioned that will be on the webpage, at the bottom of the middle list, under “Documents”.

Bill Leininger
PMVFD CERT Coordinator
Cell – 760-807-6923
Pgr – 619-665-3224

Attendees – Don Grant, Dave Shell, Dave Heiser, Robert Carlisle, Tricia Lucia, Jim Anderson, Pam Anderson, Bill Leininger

Summary
1) OES CERT Council Highlights:
a) Funding coming through for a “training trailer”, which we can bring up to the mountain, and has all the equipment and supplies to refresh and practice our primary CERT skills (small fire suppression; light search and rescue; first aid). Should have it available in a few months.
b) Funding also allocated for caches of preprogrammed HAM radios, to be used for practice, and for extra radios during a real event.

2) Pandemic Flu Education – Jim Anderson attended the pilot module. Described good information on pandemic flu, importance of PPE (Personal protective equipment – eyes, mask, gloves, gown), hand washing, waste disposal. Biggest focus on individual and family safety, not so much on community support (like helping citizens get the vaccine or other medicines). Additionally, not much information or planning in regard to potential harm from vaccinations or symptom treatment. It sounds like this module is being reworked for better applicability to CERT’s role.

3) First Aid Review/Training – Stopping Bleeding
Key Steps: a) protect yourself – gloves, mask, eye protection
b) immediate treatment – direct pressure, elevation, pressure point on an artery closer to the body from the wound; then gauze on the injury, followed by tight bandaging
c) on-going treatment – prevent shock (elevate legs, temperature control, hydrate); reevaluate for continued bleeding and rebandage as needed

4) Spring Cleaning/Barricade Delivery Prep – THANKS to everyone for your help emptying, cleaning, sorting, and repacking the gear. We now have pallets over the entire floor, so no more water damage, and all the rodent droppings are gone.

5) We were approved to receive one case a piece from last year’s Barricade delivery, in the water damaged boxes (the product is good – just the box is damaged). For those of you that didn’t get a case today, let me know, and we’ll arrange to get you one in the next few weeks. However, if you aren’t able to pick it up in the next few weeks, it will likely be distributed to other areas, so don’t wait too long.

UPCOMING EVENTS
01 August (Saturday) - Before the Threat Campaign – OES collaboration with Farmer’s insurance to provide information to citizens on fire preparedness and recovery strategies.
- Need volunteers to go door to door in various parts of the mountain to drop off satchels of information. Expect to spend about 2 hours doing handouts.

21, 22, 23 August (Fri – Sun) - Train the Trainer Class – now that you’ve had your CERT trainer, learn how to teach others. 2.5 day course, likely down by the Lindbergh Field. Required training in order to be a CERT instructor.

04 September (Friday) – PMVFD Awards Banquet – evening, at the PMVFD – celebration for all PMVFD personnel (Firefighters, Board Members, CERT, Auxiliary, etc)
05 September (Saturday) – PMVFD Annual BBQ – all day at the PMVFD – booths, raffles, food, fun for the whole family. Main fundraiser for the dept.
- CERT will be hosting an information booth on disaster preparedness, and doing Barricade demonstrations during the day
- Beyond supporting CERT, the BBQ is looking for volunteers to help with LOTS of other activities. Contact Tricia Lucia if you’re interested.

19 September (Saturday) - San Diego County CERT Day – similar to the Before the Threat Campaign (01 Aug), but sponsored by Allstate Insurance. Similar activities with distributing information to residents.

17 October (Saturday) - San Diego County CERT Drill – sponsored by Imperial Beach. Scenario – TSUNAMI!
- More details to follow, but mark your calendars – these event are a lot of fun (especially when we’re not the group hosting it!). I expect many of the CERT members from other county groups will attend this event, so it will be a good opportunity to catch up with people who joined us for the Bike Race Exercise.

Final Note – CERT is always invited to the PMVFD Monday Night drills – 1800-2100 at the PMVFD. Suzann has been going regularly, and been enjoying it. Chief Lucia and I will try to advertise the class topics if you have a particular interest.


Bill Leininger
PMVFD CERT Coordinator

Attendees – Bill Leininger, Suzann Leininger, Dave Heiser, Dave Shell, Tricia Lucia, Don Grant, Chief Lucia

First – many thanks to everyone who replied to my request for volunteer availability over Memorial Day Weekend. There weren’t any big events, but it was good to know who was in the area in case something came up.

Agenda:
Announcements
- Pala Resort Fire Safety Seminars, 02 June – attended by Dave Heiser – reported excellent collection of lectures. Next event in July, details to follow.

- SDGE Brief to County CERT – described SDGE’s upcoming plans on fire danger conditions response – discussed vegetation mitigation; system enhancement (wooden poles to metal); disabling automatic switches during fires (these can reenergize lines after damage); having SDGE response teams staged around the county during high risk times for faster response; Emergency Power Shut Off Plan
- Emergency Power Shut Off Plan - will only happen if all 5 of 5 weather/moisture criteria met. These criteria for various areas in the county are updated continuously at the SDGE website. Go go to: www.sdge.com; then “Learn about the 2009 program” in the right upper corner; then “Backcountry weather station information” in the right upper corner. The grid shows the status of the various criteria that could lead to emergency power shut off. Again, ONLY if all 5 criteria go to “Extreme Conditions”. The site is updated every few minutes.
- There’s lots more useful info at this site on how to prepare (generator safety, for example) for emergencies, so it’s worth perusing.

- Upcoming Events:
- 20 June – San Diego County Fair’s Burn Run Expo, with fire truck parade at 1300. There’s a big CERT display sponsored by County CERT at the Fair that day.
- August – Threat Assessment Class – dates and times to follow
- SEPTEMBER – NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS MONTH
- 05 Sept – ***PMVFD BBQ*** – CERT will sponsor an education and recruitment (this is the Saturday of Labor Day weekend)
- 15 Sept – Escondido CERT is starting a new Academy (training for new volunteers), if you know anyone who would like to get trained to be on CERT
- 19 Sept – Proposed Date for rescheduled County CERT Day – we’ll be participating in an information distribution effort to increase public awareness on preparedness
- October – Next County Exercise, sponsored by Imperial Beach CERT – dates and scenarios to follow

Communications Update – Dave Heiser
- Twitter Notification – for those that use Twitter (brief text messages), individuals can join a group for notifications about emergencies (PMVFD Emergencies, perhaps). Can be set up so any member can send an emergency message to all group members (“I see fire on South Grade mile marker 45”), so everyone knows right away. But, could lead to a bunch of false alarms or not so emergent messages. Alternatively, similar group could be set up with only authorized senders (Fire Dept Officers, for example) initiating messages, but could be a slower notification tool, since it has to get up the food chain before it will be sent. Great tool for getting notifications out to many people fast, but you need to ensure ONLY emergencies, and recipients have phone coverage. We’ll look at adding this piece into our growing communication plan.
- Communications Field Rig – demonstration of mobile/portable communications kits that include car mounted or man portable options; antennae techniques; power supply options; “packet” data transmission (programs to send large quantities of data from a spreadsheet, for example). GREAT options for expanding coverage and reliability of communications.

Training – First Aid – stopping bleeding – postponed to next meeting.

STAY IN TOUCH – the PMVFD has an automated e-mail group for regular and emergency announcements. Additionally, the PMVFD has regularly updated announcements on the website. In the event of an emergency, this will be the place to get accurate updates about what is happening in emergency and safety services on the mountain. The website is www.palomarfire.org – you’ll see the recent announcements, and on the right side you’ll see where you can submit your e-mail to receive the regular updates, directly to your mailbox. This site and notification service is open to all community members, so encourage others to join.

Next meetings – Saturday, 11 June at 0800 at PMVFD (1st Saturday is July 4th)
- Saturday, 01 Aug at 0800 at PMVFD
- Saturday, 05 Sep – BBQ CERT Booth and Event Support

Bill Leininger
PMVFD CERT Coordinator

http://www.sdge.com/safety/fireprep/

SDG&E’s Community Fire Safety Program is a broad-based effort to help improve fire safety in our region. 

Learn more about our program to increase reliability and safety, while reducing the likelihood of power lines being involved in wildfires during extreme weather conditions.

Click on link above for more information.

Our next CERT meeting will be this coming Saturday at 0800 at the PMVFD.

Agenda:
Announcements
Communications Update – Dave Heiser – how to send alerts via Twitter and building a communications “Go Kit”
Training – First Aid – stopping bleeding

Reminder:
This Tuesday, 02 June, from 0930 to 1430, at Pala Casino, the California Fire Safe Council will present an educational workshop, “Together is Better”, with education on fire prevention for homeowners. Details and registration at www.firesafecouncil.org. - go to the home page, and look under What’s New.

Hope to see you this Saturday,

Bill Leininger
PMVFD CERT Coordinator

The magnitude 4.7 Inglewood earthquake <http://shakeout.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e2d20a8f8e917d9b19f9e702d&id=f81e2b6867&e=27fa48f77a> on May 17th is another small reminder that California is earthquake country. While many people felt it <http://shakeout.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e2d20a8f8e917d9b19f9e702d&id=ee9968aa36&e=27fa48f77a> , there was very little damage. This is expected for a small earthquake. But we will have much larger earthquakes, including one on the San Andreas fault as described in the ShakeOut scenario <http://shakeout.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e2d20a8f8e917d9b19f9e702d&id=40a08a4f3f&e=27fa48f77a> .

How much larger? With each number increase on the Richter scale, the amplitude of motion goes up by 10, but the total energy of the shaking goes up by 32. Going up 2 points means an increase in energy of 32 times 32. So the magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake in 1994 was 1,000 times larger than the Inglewood earthquake, and a 7.8 ShakeOut earthquake will be over 40,000 times larger and shake a much larger area! See the "ShakeMaps" below.

The Inglewood earthquake is a reminder to get prepared <http://shakeout.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e2d20a8f8e917d9b19f9e702d&id=721e7fd9de&e=27fa48f77a> , and also to register to participate <http://shakeout.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e2d20a8f8e917d9b19f9e702d&id=9155adbbaa&e=27fa48f77a> in this year's statewide ShakeOut Drill on October 15th. You can register yourself or your family, and also your organization, business, or school!

Chief Lucia has asked for a census of how many CERT members will be on around the mountain on 23 – 25 May. The Fire Dept will be spread thin that day, helping with the VC Western Days events, and with the increased traffic over the holiday weekend.

Please reply to let me know if you’ll be around that weekend and the best way to contact you.

Also, 23 May is the PMPO Pancake Breakfast and Annual Meeting – it always has great updates about activities around the mountain, so consider attending if you have a chance.

Will be adding a few videos to the site!