Month: August 2019

Thanks to everyone who attended the Hurricane and Power Outage CERT meeting on August 28. With Hurricane Dorian forming and strengthening, now is the time to start thinking about preparations to ride out this storm and any more that might come our way this year.

Here is the Checklist for pre-, during, and post-hurricane actions and when power is out.

Remember, if we are hit by a hurricane, take care of yourselves, your family and your neighbors. CERT members don’t self-deploy – wait for a notification that CERT volunteer support has been officially requested.

A BIG THANKS to the twelve CERT and AuxComm members who participated in the Chatham County Firefighter Exercise on August 17th.

From the Chatham County Fire Chief:

“I wanted to pass on a huge Thanks to each of you and your personnel. Today will go down as a milestone in Chatham County Emergency Services. We have never completed a county wide water shuttle for Office of State Fire Marshal. I know all of you were hot and tired when finished. We could not have pulled today off without your participation. The were 115 personnel on the training roster and 150 personnel fed, so a few missed the roster. No injuries, no damaged equipment, and all of your tremendous willingness to help. This is saying alot, we were filling appratus at 1250 gallons a minute, moved over 418000 gallons of water in 3 1/2 hours, with 43 tankers. All of you were key players.
Please pass on to your staff and CERT for the help and making today a success.
John”

What does a county citizen do if they suspect a law enforcement officer needs assistance?

That was the July 2019 topic presented by the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office.

In a nutshell:
– Call 9-1-1 first! The officer may not have been able to notify his unit, and calling 911 will never hurt the situation.
– Do not take action unless the officer knows you are there, that you are a ‘good guy’, and the officer requests help.
– Don’t startle the officer – make sure they are aware of your presence.
– If you are a concealed handgun permit holder, DON’T draw your firearm unless asked to do so by the officer.
– Sometimes just being an extra set of eyes and ears is all that is needed.

If you come across an officer in their vehicle and they are unresponsive (perhaps due to a medical emergency) grab the vehicle’s radio microphone and call for help!

The June 2019 CERT presentation was focused on PODS, or Points of Distribution. We learned and practiced the techniques needed to quickly and efficiently distribute critical supplies to Chatham county residents in an emergency.

If you would like to learn more, FEMA has a detailed online course at https://training.fema.gov/is/courseoverview.aspx?code=IS-26.