Meetings/20180724

Catherine and Casey attended the Coastside Emergency Corps (CEC) Quarterly Public Meeting. Casey have some notes someone can share ( along with my prior notes ) with the crew this upcoming Friday.

First, just what the heck is the CEC? I am happy to be corrected, but to me it looks like this is the revival of an organization which was around some number of years ago but which became moribund with the absence of its charismatic founder. It looks like it's been rebooted by an energetic crew. Some interim board was picked several months ago and they've been working to reboot. Given the eventual floundering of the original org, and the growth of smaller orgs this group probably provides a single point of contact / umbrella.

Their site is CECPORTAL.ORG and it's fine!

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notes:

Heather Peters appointed the org's PIO - principal information officer?

Community outreach

they've printed some pamphlet for regular distribution at

• the farmers market

and events including

• the HMB night out ( National Night Out is Aug 7, and various communities have received grants for redistribution to applying neighborhood organizations. )
• Pescadero Arts and Fun Fair ( PAFF )
• San Mateo County Disster Prearedness Day booth ( Sept 22, SMC fairgrounds )

it's not a bad phamplet.

• they need volunteer Spanish translators for the pamphlet text
• they need money to print more.

Basically they are trying to both find the people who were in the org years ago and refresh it with new folks. Radio Stations - trying to figure out how to do PSAs about this stuff. Also trying to figure out methods for getting news out over the radio stations when under duress. Ham operators? some mention of a teliphone code 'command switch' which would allow the caller to take to the airwaves

Upcoming Training & Exercises

- CEOC Training. This is Community/County/City Emergency Operations Center training - how to run one, etc. I believe the people who can take this have been throught CERT and then the online FEMA courses ICS 100 & 700.

- Yellow Command ( 9/6) this is the one I described earlier. Green Command (9/8) wasn't mentioned.
- Simulated Emergency Test (SET) , Branches 1 & 2 ( 10/27 ) <- Devils Slide / HMB
- Simulated Emergency Test, Branches 3 & 4 ( 10/20 ) <- this is our area ( these are in our wiki )
-- the description of this test is 'the coast is flat' - that a 10.x has hit and basically everything is cut off.  It'll be the first 24 hours. I think they are pulling off the full deal, including moving large animals around! wild. There will be a rescue helicopter visit & show'n'tell if all the conditions work out.

CERT updates

- Jim Williams is taking over as Coordinator for Branches 1 & 2
- They're looking at offering more CERT classes, it sounded like there is a backlog of about 60 folks. ( 3 are in the witness protection program! ) They've found or trained about 90 folks in Branches 1 & 2 ( I think they are including we Butanoids who went through the last training ) as part of their recent revitalization efforts. There is some kind of internal politiking going on I understand from other sources.
- CERT train-the-trainer is going to be offered Fri SEPT 20-23 in  Richmond from 8->5 daily. So if you are CERT trained and want to help train some more folks here is your chance.

CEC business

- a discussion about building the board. they want about 9 folks drawn from the 4 branches, and there is an application form available. They need to build a board because they need officers to proceed with the structural parts of running a non-profit - getting money, getting a bank, dealing with expenses etc. OCtober 17th will be an interum board meeting wherein the candidates will be picked. Term starts Nov 1, with some handwaving about Thanksgiving and the regular meeting.

- they want a tent and some gear for their operations. didn't sound too extensive

Presentation by Canada Cove emergency crew

- another home brew group trying to prepare for the needs of between 5-700 residents of the CC trailer park.
- they are about where we are, overall. Some of the crew are ex military so they have more of their paper-response drawn up than we do.
-- about 10 neighborhoods ( called 'sectors' , about 8  neighborhood 'sector captains' and then in-sector roles
--- Leadership  / First Aide & CPR / Search & Assist ( they know they aren't resucuing lots of people ) , Initial Damage Assessment, Safety & Security ( the 'what the hell are you doing here ?' gang ), shelter & special needs
-- they know they can't set up a shelter, so they are sorta cataloging how they will get their folks out
-- lots of physically impared people in their population
-- they've applied for grants from the National Night Out org ( via HMB ) to have neighborhood / sector parties that night and get the word about
-- I think I scrawled 'Rex Andrea' and 'Tom Squiggle'  as the presenters names, sorry.