Saratoga CERT Newsletter – November 2018

Saratoga Community Emergency Response Team November News & Updates

PG&E Community Workshop

On Thursday, 11/08, 35 residents (and two non-residents) of Saratoga participated in the PG&E neighborhood workshop and learned about how to respond to gas and electric emergencies. The Saratoga Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) hosted the two-hour event and everyone was so impressed with the topic and the presenter. We received three inquiries about our next Saratoga CERT Academy scheduled for April.

Crowd & Traffic Control

Thank you again to Kerry Harris for the great crowd and traffic management class last month. We learned how to manage crowds in the event of a disaster or a distribution process. The group also learned techniques for minimal traffic control. The highlight of the event was the lighting of road flares. Many of the CERT folks had never used a road flare before. National Preparedness Training Solutions provided an excellent training for our group. We are now ready to assist in traffic or crowd control when asked.

County Wide Drill

Saratoga had 15 participants in the recent County-wide CERT Drill – congratulations to all who mentored, volunteered, and participated. I don’t have a Saratoga list for the Ham ARES/RACES part of the drill, but I know there were at least 4 from Saratoga there – again congrats!

Davina wrote a blog post about the drill at http://saratogacert.org/2018/11/13/report-on-october-county-wide-cert-races-drill/

Membership Meetings

Given our November PGE class and all the CERT activity at the county drill, we will skip regular Saratoga CERT membership meetings in November and December. Your divisions may have meetings before the end of the year, please contact your division leads for details. Our next Saratoga CERT meeting should be in January 2019. Also, don’t forget to sign up for the December 5th CERT refresher on Communication and Documentation at the Saratoga Prospect Center:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cert-refresher-8-communication-documentation-tickets-47540756683

Though we will not have a full membership meeting before the end of the year, Craig and I will try to work out some distribution days for FRS radios to those CERT members who have their city DSW cards. Look to announcements of dates and times soon! If you do not have your DSW card, please an appointment with Lori McKenna at 408-868-1240 – If your card has expired, you can contact Lori and ask for a new one without going in for a new picture. DSW cards are processed between 2:00 and 4:00 on City “on-Fridays.”

Details at http://saratogacert.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DSWcard.pdf

New Members

Welcome to our new Saratoga CERT graduates from the Los Altos Academy – Susanne von Stern, Nancy Cheung, and John Chang – and from the Los Gatos Academy – Cynthia Darrow and Deborah Ellis – you should be contacted soon (if you haven’t already) by Jessica (our membership lead) and Craig (our logistic lead). Also, please join our Yahoo! group for periodic announcements – https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/saratoga_cert/info – we hope to be off that mailing list soon, but until we have finalized the transition, we are still using it. Don’t forget to check out our web page for regular postings and blog entries: saratogacert.org

FYI our new leadership organization chart can be found at http://saratogacert.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/org-chart-111318.pdf and our new division map is at http://saratogacert.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/saratoga-09-03-18.pdf

New Saratoga CERT Blogger

Ron Jones, Saratoga’s newest Assistant Emergency Coordinator, will be posting regularly to our CERT blog – http://saratogacert.org/category/blog/ – with updates of our local ham activities. If others of you would be interested in writing for our blog and newsletter, please contact Brent Hailpern directly at info@saratogacert.org .