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Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service
CERT Program
Minutes for October 12, 2006
Attendance:
- Thomas Smith, President, presided.
- 37 (Thirty-seven) CERT members signed the Roster.
- Chief Brian Geraci, who has full
administrative and organizational responsibility for the CERT program, was in
attendance.
- 7:00 PM through
8:10 PM at the Public Safety
Training Academy (PSTA), 9710 Great Seneca Highway, Rockville, MD 20850
- At 8:10 pm the
meeting was adjourned and "Committee Time" started to discuss tasks assigned
to committee members. Only appointed committee members need to attend this
part of the meeting . All other CERT members are encouraged to stay and
participate.
- Minutes taken by Lee Wisniewsky
New Business:
New CERT graduates
The Chief introduced new CERT
members from the September class and handed out certificates.
NIMS organizational hierarchy
A member suggested that we think
about adopting the NIMS organizational hierarchy because it is the federal
standard.--> NIMS handbook can be found at
www.galls.com
New CPR Guidelines
The Chief passed out CPR cards
Committee Reports
Safety - David Contois
a) Combining with Operations. Tasked with getting all members medical records
incase of deployment with gov. agency --> Medical Emergency Information Card
on website (www.commercefire.com).
These cards would be collected at every emergency event.
b) File for Life - these can be obtained through Surburban Hospital
301-896-3939. Please note all meds that you carry with you on the cards as
well as all meds you are taking.
Operations - Benjamin
Koshy
a) Training- an email will be sent out to the members with a link to a form on
our website
This is to gather all training information for members to create a training
cycle. Reminders of when we need to renew, what qualifies us to do certain
jobs.
b) Looking at other CERT field ops guide for the long term goal of creating
our own field guide.
c) List of items for the go-bags and where we can obtain these items.
Planning - No rep present
Outreach - No rep present
Liaison - Marcie Roth
a) need more members for committee
b) identify groups to build liaisons with
c) idea of hosting meeting with all NGO and gov. orgs. that we will be working
with so that there can be one introduction and not several introductions.
Finance/Administration -
Eyabane Patasse
1. Committee montgomerycert.org email addresses: in general people agreed with
the email aliases for the committees, but a couple did point out the need to
have some sort of sender’s restriction to prevent email flooding. One member
suggested doing what yahoo groups do, whereby only members can send to
members, preventing spammers from flooding the group.
2. Regarding data sensitivity: quite a few people raised concerns over the
need for CERT organization to request any such sensitive info --social
security, to be specific-- and some pointed out that the rare 3rd party
volunteering ops that we get involved with usually have their own website for
them to signup to. Thomas added that in some cases where we may get deployed
with the FEMA (for example) such sensitive info may be required from us
directly. One member suggested maintaining an off-line db that could be
cross-referenced (on a as-needed basis) once the registration list is pulled
from online. I raised a concern over the admin overhead but that didn’t fly.
3. On your question about where to send the signup sheet when there is no lead
for the event: Chief Brian replied that there will always be a designated
lead.
4. Thomas also proceeded to present the “CERT member certifications” webpage,
and he explained its purpose.Below are some enhancements/feature requests that
I collected from subsequent questions/comments:
a. Provide the ability for a
member to query this database for their own training records;
b. Ultimately have someone/system track certification expiration dates and
warn members (via email, for example);
Logistics -
Basil Nikas
a) Operational Tasks:
--> Equipment: web based catalog to buy from
- classifying equipment as need to have, nice to have and advanced.
- possibility of a van in the future with additional equipment?
--> Purchasing
--> Equipment Distribution
--> Communications Subcommittes
Policy/Proceedures
Communications with county, hand
radio operators, etc.
Training members on equipment
Technology --> brainstorm
Old Business
Addresses for regional service centers
Information has been made available on our
Montgomery CERT website under
Resources.
Service center list passed out at the meeting.
CERT Training
A system to collect what training our CERT
members has received will be put in place on our website. emails will be sent
out once this feature is available.
Upcoming Events and Training:
Check our
Montgomery CERT website under
News - Upcoming Events and under News -
Training for
the latest info and links.
Next CERT Meeting:
Thursday, November 9, 2006,
7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Leisure World of Maryland, Club House # 1
Maryland Room
3701 Rossmoor Blvd, Silver Spring, MD
Google Map link
Please bring a picture ID for the front gate (ANY picture ID; preferably your
CERT ID)
Clubhouse 1 is at the end of Rossmoor Blvd when you come in the entrance off of
Georgia Ave.
Next CERT training class (for new graduates) will be held in Nov. we need
instructors and CPR instructors
December meeting may be a social hour - location to be announced!
Oct. 21, 2006, Saturday - Mass
Decon Training
from 0900h-1500h
at the Public Safety Training Academy (PSTA)
9710 Great Seneca Highway
Rockville, MD 20850
Please contact Lt. Mike Adams directly at 301-928-1530 as soon as
possible to register.
Nov. 4, 2006, Saturday - Emergency Action Training Part II
Community Outreach:
Check our
Montgomery CERT website under
News - Outreach for
the latest info and links.
Oct. 21, 2006, Saturday -
Boy Scout Troop #41 Rockville
Oct. 22, 2006, Sunday -
Open house at Hillandale VFD in Colesville station 24
1200h -1500h
At station 24. 13216 New Hampshire Ave. Silver Spring, MD 20904
Google Map
Contact is Ms. Stevens at 240-461-4936
Oct. 28, 2006, Saturday - Volunteer Center Community Service Day
Check the webpage for updates.
Other items:
Montgomery CERT website
We are using the Montgomery CERT web site
more and more as an effective means of getting information out to members.
Please visit it frequently.
The address is
www.MontogomeryCERT.org (upper or lower case letters do not matter)
We are expecting this site will improve
communications and keep all CERT members (both old and new) up to date with
events and information they may find useful.
CERT custom embroidered clothing
EmbroidMe of Rockville, MD www.embroidmeMD.com
Call for
availability and pricing
1032 Rockville
Pike
Rockville, MD
20852
Phone (301)
315-0488
Equipment:
CERT Go Bags and
CERT Vests were distributed to CERT Members who had not received their bag at a
previous meeting. Each Go Bag comes with a few items but needs to be
supplemented. If you do not have a Go Bag use the Feedback page on our site.
Alert Montgomery:
Alert Montgomery
is the communication system Montgomery County will use in the event of an
emergency to communicate with CERT Members. It is imperative that all CERT
Members register.
To enroll in the
Alert Montgomery system, go to http://alert.montgomerycountymd.gov
First, you need to
register as a new user (on the left side menu, just under the log in area) and
establish a password to set up your account.
Once into the
system, select your status as a CERT volunteer by choosing the group name CERT;
then enter the registration code (use the Feedback page on our website to obtain
the code).
Montgomery County
will send a text message to activate volunteer responders.
You can also elect
to receive notifications about severe weather or traffic. NOTE: Subscribing to
severe weather and traffic alerts will increase the number of messages you
receive.
Alert Montgomery
delivers important emergency alerts, notifications and updates to you on any or
all of your devices at once (your choice):
- e-mail account
(work, home, other)
- cell phone
- text pager
- BlackBerry
- wireless PDA
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