National CERT Conference Report
Note: The National CERT Conference was held here in Los Angeles last month. CERT members from all 50 states and several foreign countries were here for three days to participate in the event. The following is from Jim Stebinger, the Battalion 4 CERT Coordinator. Those of you who attended our ACS Division II Drill last Saturday got to meet Jim. The following is Jim's report. There is a lot of good and interesting information here -- and valuable for both CERT and ACS members.
Jonathan K6JGZ ACS-CERT Liaison
From Jim Stebinger:
The conference convened at the Sheraton Universal hotel around 8 a.m. Two of the morning highlights were comments by Sheriff Lee Baca and a presentation by Deputy Irv Bornstein, who outlined disaster communications options.
Baca, followed later in the day by California First Lady Maria Shriver, thanked all of us working in emergency preparedness. Both top level leaders repeated their thanks and their belief that preparedness is vital. But Baca took another important tack. “There is no magic in preparedness,” Baca said, recognizing that the field primarily requires consistent effort. He then stated one of his basic goals – to be certain that every family in the county had a working disaster plan.
His comments suggested to me that we must keep an eye on the basics. Battalion and division level actions are fine, but the core focus remains individuals and neighborhoods. If we can take the time to remind all our friends and their families to be certain they have a good kit and a solid plan we will have taken a major step forward. It is good to review our own preparedness levels from time to time, too.
Deputy Bornstein gave an overview talk on the subject of disaster communications. He said that the sheriff’s have a net of about 800 ham operators and are looking for more.
He said that cell phones and land line phones would probably be out of commission and that satellite phones, though useful, would not be a communication backbone. He indicated that ham radio, FRS and GMRS would likely be the most important.
He admitted that many ham operators love to talk and urged planners to work to control that tendency. He strongly advocated FRS for short distance work because the sets are cheap and ubiquitous. He also urged comm planners to look at GMRS and urged them to be certain the proper licensing was obtained.
In general., he had the following specific recommendations for communications planning.
1)Build phone, internet and other “trees.” Make the names and numbers on those trees widely available.
2)Test your communication “trees” often and prune faulty numbers and addresses.
3)Make sure you are using enough frequencies and make sure they are mission specific. Avoid cross-talk when possible.
4)Recognize that channel 1 on FRS (and GMRS?) is being set aside by agreement as an emergency channel and most traffic one 1 will be emergency related.
Jonathan Zimmerman noted that many GMRS radios have all the FRS frequencies built in, making them doubly useful. Jonathan also noted that ham licensing is not only recommended by many authorities, it is easy to get. If you are interested, e-mail me.
Mary Ann Sherritt noted that users of GMRS equipment are expected to broadcast their license numbers during transmission. She also noted that the speaker strongly recommended GMRS users make repeater arrangements to extend range.
The next talk was very interesting and quite “meaty.” It was delivered by a woman, whose name I didn’t catch. She is an administrator with Huntington Beach. The talk was ostensibly about tsunami preparation, and indeed tsunami preparation was discussed. However, she said she was trying to give the audience a methodology for planning and CERT development that was useful for all disaster planning.
I found it useful because she gave four important check lists that are critical for planning. Her perspective was that of a city planner, but much of the thinking is useful in a wide variety of planning contexts.
The first checklist was an overall approach to the problem, be it earthquake or tsunami or whatever.
1–Study the problem. I found that interesting because it is easy to get caught up in how to respond to an (earthquake) without knowing much about what an earthquake actually is. When I thought about it I realized that the more you know about the problem the better subsequent planning becomes.
2–Develop a Plan (1) The first planning stage is aimed at mitigation,
3-Mitigate. Do the most immediate things necessary to limit the extent of the problem.
4-Develop the emergency plan
5-Exercise the plan
Training
7-Public Education.
Training is critical for all emergency workers, but she seemed to spend more time on education.
She listed six “targets” for an education campaign
1-Emergency Services managers
2-Public information officers
3-Public Safety officials
4-Elected officials
5-Media
6-Potential Volunteers and the public
This is an interesting checklist because it is a short list of the people to keep informed when we do CERT activities in our neighborhoods. Keeping people on this list informed will help to network and build volunteer teams.
To find volunteers she suggested the following sources.
1) Public Officials
2) Non-profit organizations
3) Business organizations
4) Service clubs
5) Environmental organizations
6) “Town Hall” type meetings (get your message out at any appropriate local event ).
To maximize impact she talked about the “30-day window.” Have a prepared news release ready and recognize that whenever a disaster strikes anywhere in the world you have about 30 days of heightened interest to get your message out.
7) Identify special needs groups and be sure to reach out to them. Elderly people, disabled, pet owners. Others
Huntington Beach has used volunteers to create a speaker’s bureau and trains the volunteers to deliver preparedness talks throughout the community so the message is forever reinforced.
Her public education campaign uses the following methods:
1)Print
2Public access cable
3)Curriculum – working with schools to add material to the classroom
4)Fairs
5)Information booths at special events
6)News media
7)Water bills (if you have access to officials and can get them to put occasional preparedness notes on regularly sent bills)
8)Signs
9)Hold workshops for target audiences
10)Public Service Announcements
11)Articles in newsletters.
She strongly recommended having media contact lists and pre-written (“canned”) releases that can be reworked as needed. She cautioned against over-submitting releases because you don’t want to burn a contact.
She spoke about the need to mix your sources to reach people of different educational levels. Scientists are over the heads of many people, but there are those who are especially ready to listen to them. People in uniform and government officials are respected – but not by everyone. American Red Cross representatives and volunteers can be seen as non-threatening. Using all three categories of information giver reaches a very broad audience.
Further info
www.oes.ca.gov
916.845.8400 (not sure which agency)
an email address at oes is ipa@oes.ca.gov
www.hbcert.org is the Huntington Beach site
The next presentation was labeled “The Future of CERT” and was a discussion of the future of CERT. CERT is growing ande currently numbers 2110 programs nationwide. And is now in all states. This represents a 45% increase since January, 2005.
The moderators said a national conference drawing together hams, emts, FEMA, CERT and the Red Cross is in the works and could be organized for January.
Also new (at lest to me) is a national Fire Corps which is a component of Citizens Corp. Fire Corps is similar to CERT in that in calls for volunteers to aid local fire departments as force extenders. The difference is that’s an operational role in emergencies, Fire Corps looks to develop ways in which volunteers can assist fire departments daily in non-operational roles.
Those roles include various types of clerical support, grant writing, computer work, fundraising, youth mentoring, answering phone calls and managing office tasks. There are many others.
The goal is to extend the effectiveness of cash-strapped departments.
Fire Corps is looking to create teams in various localities. The Fire Corps speaker, Sarah Lee, can be reached at slee@firecorps.org
California First Lady Maria Shriver spoke at lunch and delivered a “non-keynote” keynote address. She lauded all present and spoke at some length on the values and virtues of community action and involvement.
More importantly for us, her speech was the platform for honoring Linda Underwood for her service to LAFD CERT. Linda received an award signed jointly be the governor and his wife and was given a standing ovation for her key role in the growth and development of CERT. The fact that CERT as we know it is difficult to conceive without Linda’s effort was noted by all speakers.
Heart felt congratulations, Linda!
Jim
posted by ACS-CERT Liaison @ 8:35 PM
0 comments
