CERT: 2008 in Review

Hi Team: Here is the list of things that kept your CERT's team busy in 2008.

January 2008 Work was completed on the shelter plans for the Oakdale Fire Department and the Oakdale Community Center. These had to be finished and into the PEMA office.

March thru May Handouts placed in the mail. Hope that everyone got the message.

May 2008 Severe water break. Highland Avenue. made sure fire and police were on the same page. No problems occurred.

May 2008 Shelter Trailer requested and used at McGuffey High School Washington County as an emergency shelter for the Beaver Valley Power Plant. Mock Disaster

August 2008 Attended training for protective clothing. Were still waiting for the 6 sets. I keep getting E-mails, but still no clothing.

August 2008 Attended and Emergency management meeting at Kindred Hospital. Very good information was exchanged.

September 2008 HURRICANE Ike caught everyone by surprise, but us we were prepared, but thank goodness is just missed us.

September 2008 Our team and the trailer attended the 911th Air Wing National Disaster medical System Exercise. A lot was learned by everyone.

December 2008 Power outage effecting the entire. mainly we were concerned about contacting Special Needs people, got our list and checked it twice

December 2008 Flood Watch 1.5 inches of rain overnight put the creeks up to the top of the channels. It closed the parking Warf in Pittsburgh. But we were spared that

I myself would say it was a pretty busy time, for a place where nothing ever happens.

submitted by: CERT Director, Bob Kolesky

database

updated the CERT database with better search

911th Airlift Wing

CERT:

A couple members of the Oakdale CERT team had the privledge of attending a training exercise at the 911th Air Wing group on Sat. Sept. 28th.  The exercise dealt with various military organizations conducting a medical rescue task in response to a large scale disaster.  Attending were: Bob Kolesky, Harry Kennedy, Ched Davis, and Bob's grandson Joey.  We were basically representing the Red Cross and we pulled our Red Cross emergency trailer into the base Sat. morning.  While it is always an honor to assist and be involved with our military "real-life heroes", there was also a huge "little-boy fun-factor" here as well.  Many of us got to be made-up as wounded, and strapped into a C-130 Military Transport plane.  Young Joey also got the treat of being loaded onto one of the Lifeflight helicopters that took part in the exercise.  The Salvation Army also provided free lunches to all those involved.

CERT Updates

Sat. was a busy day for me.  I did a lot of updating to the CERT website, AND the CERT database.  While updates to the database are pretty common, the website doesn't get updated too often at all.  Not much newsworthy about either update, other than to the members who use them.

eMail

if you use copy and paste methods, you may notice that there are spaces before and after the "@" symbol when I post an email address.  This is deliberate, and you should type the entire email address "WITHOUT" the spaces.

The spaces were added to prevent spam spiders from harvesting the email accounts and dumping invasive spam and spyware into our inboxes.

Thanks for your understanding,

If you have any questions, ... call Ched at 412-580-0098

Editors Wanted

If you are a member of the Oakdale community, and would like to not only comment, but to author your own blog posts here:

contact:
Ched Davis
412-580-0098
cheddavis @ live.com
or email the community at:
oakdalepa @ verizon.net

CERT: Sept 15 Meeting

During our Oakdale CERT meeting of Sept. 15, several items were discussed.

1. Bob reviewed a meeting he had with school officials and their interest in being involved with the local CERT members, as well as other community activities.

2. Lea has researched other CERT groups and investigated several items: one being a small CERT handbook that can be purchased for $10, and ... the possibility of purchasing a ream of "waterproof" paper. CERT member voted unanimously to pursue the purchase the paper for printing out waterproof copies of emergency documents and numbers.

3. We were happy to have a new member join us, .... Welcome Daniel.

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In Attendance:
Lea
Bob
Harry
Ched
Dave Z.
Larry
Jean
Daniel