[PAO] CAP and disaster relief.

[kd4ios at embarqmail.com]

I hold the EOC seat for Military Support to Civilian Authority and have done so for multiple years, being an active participant  during hurricanes, disaster drills and even ran the Logistics Staging Area when FL had back to back hurricanes.  This came from contacts just as you are describing.

CAP got plaudits from the truckers who transport food, water and ice.  One driver said, "Your operation is one of the smoothest and most professionally run I have ever seen, and I've been doing this for a long time.   I think he said 40 years, but I can't be sure of the time length.

We used ICS forms and contacted the Emergency Manager (EM) for the county on a regular basis.  By the end of the day, all the bills of lading, conversations with the EM and other support staff were not only logged, but printed out and delivered to the EM within 30 minutes of the operation shut down.   They had hard copies printed out showing what went where, who took it, and when it was deployed.  At one time we had 150 Tractor Trailer Rigs on the yard of a former citrus plant.

It worked exceedingly well.  The biggest amount of fun I got was having National Guard Officers drop in to tell me that they were former CAP Cadets and were pleased to see the professionalism and involvement of my support staff.

The funniest thing I can recall was one cadet who wore glasses  was given a safety briefing concerning forklifts, and the routes they would take into and out of a huge freezer.

As he came out of the freezer, his glasses fogged over so I added an additional warning about fog appearing out of nowhere during the day.  He looked at me with a serious expression, until I told him to wipe the condensation off of his glasses, then he enjoyed the laugh that the other cadets were giving him.  

You can't work too closely with sister agencies.   Our people MUST be consummate professionals and provide more effort than anyone else in order to be respected for the job that volunteer professionals can do for the other organizations. They will put you in all sorts of positions once they know they can trust you to do things the right way

Keep up the good work!

David M. Moseley, Lt. Colonel, CAP
ESF 13 Chair for the Lake County FL
EOC


From: Alice Mansell 
Sent: Friday, September 06, 2013 6:49 PM
To: CAP Public Affairs Officers 
Subject: [PAO] CAP and disaster relief.


How about back to Tom's orginal question?

At my local sq at Palo Alto, California, we are having an all-hands participation in our local airport open house Sept 29. We park our plane and recruiting booth smack between the local pilot/airport association  host of the day's events and our city's fire and police force.  We do static line patrol and provide a cadet color guard for an opening ceremony.  Often the local Red Cross and USCGAux comes thanks to many, many invites to them from CAP over the years and when they show up, we set up very close to them.  We make a lot of useful swapped-biz-card contacts.  For example, a few years ago our city police battle wagon programmed in key radio contact freqs with CAP.

We also participate on a n annual ground SAR exercise with out local county sheriff SAR team woch are always actove in local disasters.

So.... last year when the city battle wagon was dipatched to help with Occupy Oakland, CAP radio freqs were primed and ready to go if needed by local cops whpw first hand our capabilities and call-out procedures.  Sometimes the best training and relationship building is done at community events like airport open houses and Red Cross disaster preparedness events.

Cheers to all,
Alice

>>September is national Disaster Preparedness Month.  I was just curious about

>>How many PAO’s are writing articles about how their wings are/have been training to address local disaster response.

 

>Tom Traver



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