And the Big News is - Big changes are coming to the Safety area.
At the National Board Meeting in San Antonio, Col Letteer stepped down as National Safety Officer. His replacement is Col Robert Diduch, former Northeast Region Commander.
Major Paul Mondoux
is the new Northeast Region directed of Safety. The Major is the former New Hampshire Wing Director of Safety and author of the new Safety ratings. He has been a great assistance to Pennsylvania Wing in the past.
Major changes are coming to the area of safety. The Air Force and the National Staff are requiring a monthly safety briefing with alternate methods of obtaining this briefing. This briefing will still be a minimum of 15 minutes and also require a face to face meeting every 3 months. The attendance must be recorded onto the WMU (e-Services will be picking up on this in the near future) Safety Reporting Section. Anyone not having completing this requirement is not authorized to participate in any CAP or Air Force mission until this requirement is cleared. The National Board changed this to allow the member to attend a unit meeting for the sole purpose of attending the safety briefing. Revisions to CAPR 62-1and 2 will be released in October. The bottom line is that each unit will be required to demonstrate accountability for its members concerning safety. Units and/or members not completing the safety requirements will not be allowed to participate in any CAP activity. More information will be released by National in the near future.
ORM - (Organizational Risk Management) New requirement for unit commanders and safety officers have been announced by National Headquarters. All unit commanders and activity commanders and the safety officers for the unit and activity must complete the basic and technician safety ratings and both (basic and intermediate) ORM courses. These courses are located in the Safety area of the National Web page and have all the information required to complete the open book test. The tests vary from 20 to 25 questions and each course should not take longer than 30 minutes. The results are automatically transferred to your training record in e-Services.
Safety Down Day - That time is upon us once again. Time for you to conduct your required safety down day. All units and members are required to conduct a unit safety down day for its members. Wing, Region and National will be sending out information packets of subjects that may be used to complete the requirement. Or you may produce your program designed for your unit and its activities. Your completion of this important program will be documented by the unit entering the information into the Safety section of the WMU. Units and/or members not completing this directive may be suspended from all activities until this is cleared.
Annual Safety Survey - This required safety item is required to be completed by Jan 31 of each year. But starting Oct 1, the on-line entry system will be cleared and new inputs will be accepted. Why not get this requirement completed early and then you will not have me calling you in January to remind you to get it done. At the National Board meeting I heard that many wings are requiring their units completing this by the end of October.
Wing Conference Safety Meeting - We will be conducting an ORM and a Wing Safety Down Day at the wing conference. You may attend this and have your name added to those completing the requirement. Also a required meeting for all unit safety officers will be held to explain the new requirements and answer any questions about forms, the WMU, and e-Services. This takes the place of the Specialty Track learning lab.
Operation CAPSafe - Operation CAPSafe is now on-line. Go to e-services and click on CAP Safety Suggestions on the left-hand menu. This should make entries easier for your Safety Suggestions as well as giving the Safety Team tracking capabilities for Operation CAPSafe entries.
I would also like to remind everyone that all prior CAP National Safety Programs, including the Safety Pledge, were terminated in December 2005.
Wing Director of Safety will again be out of the county from Oct 23 until Nov 1. I will be available on Skype and via the internet but there may be some delay in getting back to you. Please be advised that there is a 3 hour time difference between Pennsylvania and Argentina. If something is time critical, please contact the Wing Commander.
