Morrisville CERT general meeting minutes from January 20th, 2010

Morrisville CERT general meeting minutes from January 20th, 2010

6:45 – Sharon V., Cert Secretary started meeting

• brought up the litter sweep that we were doing that Saturday Jan. 23rd at 9:30am; was short notice so knew we wouldn’t have a lot of sign ups.
• Discussed the Train the Trainer that is Feb 24th thru Feb 26th in Shelby, NC…if anyone is interested the expenses are covered except gas to get there
• Brought up that we had gotten our Grant Award in the amount of $6378…per Ron Klus we have to wait for the government to give us the money in about 2 wks and then we have to spend it by April 30th, 2010
• Reminded everyone of the Fireman Appreciation dinner Saturday evening Jan 23rd at 6pm

7:00 – opened it up to questions / comments from the team

• Ron passed out the ID badges of the people that hadn’t picked them up yet. If anyone on the team has not gotten their ID badge please get with Jay Seuss at town hall. jseuss@townofmorrisville.org….you can set up a time to get your picture taken and it doesn’t take him long to make the badge. Or if you want to wait I’ll try to set it up again where after the next class he can do it at the graduation night again.
• Olivia asked about arranging a set schedule of ride-a-longs with police/fire for each team member. We’ll need to revisit this due to everyone’s availability.
• Rose Brought in samples of the house signs that is a fund-raiser for the Explorers (Jr. Firefighters)…they are a nice bright sign that can be attached to your mailbox post in order for police/fire to find your house # quickly. If you are in a neighborhood with a home owners you’ll need to check your rules to be sure it’s ok…they are kind of large.
• Sharon reminded of the next Morrisville CERT class dates which are Feb 20th/21st and Feb 27th/28th.

7:15 – Keith Kestner, member of the Morrisville CERT team, volunteered to do our training tonight. It was called “What to do when you come upon an accident scene”. Keith has 15 years experience in motorist assistance and holds a GMRS (General Mobile Radio Service) license which allows you to monitor emergency radio channels. As a brief summary the highlights are:

Before you stop at a scene make sure of your own safety first by parking in front and out of the way of the scene so as not to involve yourself in the accident. Then the next most important thing to do is to know your location…not general location but get real specific so emergency responders can get to the accident quickly. With his experience when he calls into 911 he is able to give specifics as to whether each person in the accident is injured or physically trapped in the vehicle, whether there is liquid leaking from engine area or gas tank, etc. This helps the 911 center know what type of equipment to dispatch. When emergency personel arrive on the scene you can download them on the info you have collected from any of the victims and let them take over. Before leaving the scene make sure you ask if there is anything else that would be needed from you before leaving so as not to be accused later of having been involved or the cause of the accident.

8:15 – meeting adjourned

Meeting Reminder Wednesday 1-20-10

Just wanted to send out a note that we will be having our meeting this Wednesday. Please plan to attend. Keith, one of our CERT team members is going to be doing a presentation at this meeting.

Thanks - Sharon

Minutes from November 18th meeting

Morrisville CERT general meeting minutes
November 18th, 2009

6:40 pm
Sharon Vrooman, Secretary of Morrisville CERT called the meeting to order. Gave a quick update to last meetings open items. We had received a few donations towards the funds needed for turning in the application for the 501C3 application. (By end of meeting we had collected enough to be able to send it in – THANKS SO MUCH FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT ON THIS!)

Advised that we wouldn’t be able to pull the “Train the trainer” class together quick enough for the first weekend in December. We are going to try to get it scheduled for January….working with Patty Moore (NC CERT Program Manager) on this…more info to come to those that had signed up.

6:50 pm
Ron Klus, Morrisville Fire Marshal and our CERT liaison with the MFD announced the dates of our next CERT training. We will be doing Wednesday February 17th, Sat / Sun February 20th & 21st then the following Wednesday February 24th and finish up Sat/Sun February 27th and 28th…final exercise on the 28th. A more detailed schedule of times / schedule will be available on the CERT website. Ron also advised he had the sign up form updated on the Town of Morrisville website. Sharon will get with Juan, our website guru, and make sure we have it linked correctly to the new form and to the background check form from the Morrisville CERT website.

7:00 pm
Lillian Whitson, who had volunteered to take on the task of applying for grant monies, gave an update on the new one that we were advised of by Patty Moore. It was a last minute pull together with a lot of help from Ron and Shannon, the Fire Chiefs assistant due to the secretary (yep me) holding it up in my emails. It was a pretty detailed document where we were applying for almost $9k, which had to be broken down into categories of expenditures. Then lots of explanation as to what everything would be used for. Much appreciation goes out to the 3 of them for getting it put together. One of the requirements however is that it has to be approved by the town council before filing it and due to a conflict of interest for Lillian she had to resign from being the Grant chairperson. She is going to continue to be our liaison however with local businesses that offer different grants programs. She will meet with them, find out what is available and then pass that off to Stefanie Reed who has volunteered to be the Grant chairperson.

Lillian also advised that she had talked to the Morrisville Chamber of Commerce who suggested we could possibly collect funds from local businesses (once we have our tax exempt status) in exchange for advertising their business name in print on our CERT shirts or on our brochures. For example…. “Sponsored by Morrisville Deli”

7:10 pm
Introduced Patty Moore, NC CERT Program Manager and guest speaker of the night. She started in this position 8 months ago. Talked of her background of going on a mission trip with a group of teens and worrying that if something happened to one of them while they were fixing a roof how she wouldn’t know what to do. Her husband being a fireman then helped her with some basic first aid training and then she got involved with CERT and then the opportunity with NC Emergency Management came up as the CERT Program Mngr. She spoke of how she is really trying to revamp the “Train the Trainer” curriculum. She is incorporating more hands on training and also including an “adult education” section, which will help the trainees actually learn how to teach others.

She talked about how they had held their first Teen CERT training at a public school in Chatham county and also one had just been held at a private school in Cary. There are also several colleges that are wanting to hold this training on their campus so that there will be trained individuals in the dorms. A few were UNCG, Peace, one in Asheville, etc.

Questions were asked as to whether there is a training offered in Spanish or one that would be able to be accessible to a handicapped individual. Patty said there is a Spanish curriculum available on the main CERT website and the program could be taught to handicapped individuals to be able to help them learn how to take care of themselves during an emergency. A program for the blind was brought up but she did not know of a Braille curriculum being available.

She is also trying to come up with a North Carolina CERT website where all of the 128 current teams could be listed and have links to their own sites on it. Could also have a master calendar of events so that maybe teams could see when other teams are having their trainings and be able to travel to different areas and participate in their final exercises. The more practice / experience the better we can be prepared.

We filled her in on what our current team has done for extended training such as visiting the 911 call center, participating in the Town’s disaster training and learning how to control traffic. She was glad to see that we were willing to help out volunteering in other ways. She mentioned PODS (points of distribution), which are set up when there are bad storms or evacuations. Volunteers are needed to pass out tarps, water, food, etc…. She said if we were interested she would add Morrisville CERT to her contact list and would let us know when we could help out.

She also mentioned that she is trying to put together a statewide exercise utilizing all the NC CERT teams. There is one that she thinks is scheduled for May of 2010 with a hurricane as the disaster…she’ll give an update later.

8:10 pm
Meeting ended and announced that with the Christmas holiday in December and people having lots to do that we would not hold a meeting next month. Next meeting will be January 20th, 2010.

CERT Upload - By-laws

Morrisville CERT By-laws Version 1 (Signed)

CERT Meeting April 15th Agenda - Tax Day!

It’s that time again for our Monthly Wednesday night meeting April 15th.
(hope you all got your taxes done :>)

Topics of discussion:

• Harris Nuclear plant visit
• Chain Saw training class
• Morrisville Fire Dept. Annual Picnic

Please advise if you didn’t see an invitation for this which would have come from Shannon (Chief Wright’s helper). I can forward it to you. Chief extended this invitation to CERT and their families as it would give us a chance to put names with faces for both the fire dept and our team. We as the CERT team are going to bring the side dishes.

Thanks so much everyone and hope you and your families have a blessed Easter!!