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Good morning. Traditionally, Fall is our busiest time of the year with events taking place, training wrapping up for the year and with planning going on for the upcoming year. This year is no different as the Fall Festivals are in full swing and we continue to plan for the LEAPN2CERT Conference in February.

This Monday we had scheduled the last of our Next Step's Courses for 2015. However, since we have scheduled a full-scale exercise for November 14th, we have decided to host an Exercise Prep Class for this Monday, October 26th. The Prep Class will take place at Fire Station #18 located at 4360 55th Avenue North and will start promptly at 6:30pm. I would encourage everyone that plans to participate in the exercise attend.

The Full-Scale Exercise on Saturday, November 14th is designed to truly immerse CERT members into a disaster. From the moment you arrive you will be met by survivors pleading for assistance in saving their friends and co-workers. By limiting the amount of CERT members per drill hour, we are creating a more realistic exercise as their will be more survivors than rescuers. As slots are limited, please sign up ASAP to secure your place in the exercise.

Please take a moment to look over the many opportunities available over the next month to serve. We will be having a Pancake Breakfast fundraiser, a CERT informational booth that needs staffing to promote preparedness and the CERT program, and much more.

I look forward to finishing off 2015 strong!! There have been many successes this year and I must admit a few disappointments. However as we look to 2016, let us build the Lealman CERT program even further. Not to get a bigger ego, but to truly prepare our communities to prepare for, respond to and recover from a disaster that is so overdue. As always, please reach out to me with any concerns or suggestions you may have. This is YOUR program...

Respectfully,
  
K. Larry Thompson, Captain  

  
In this issue
#LEAPN2CERT 

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We are currently in the fundraising process for a CERT Conference at the Florida Elks Youth Camp in Umatilla, Florida on February 25th through the 2
8th 2016. This event will take a lot of effort and we need members to help organize and manage aspects of this project. As it is shaping up, we will be offering two tracks with seven breakout sessions for a total of 14 unique courses. We are also discussing the possibility of hosting a CERT Basic Course at the Conference. If you can think of any classes you would be interested in, please forward the information to me. Our goal is to make this a learning opportunity to strengthen and provide training to make our communities safer and our members better prepared.

In addition, we will provide several "social" opportunities and an exercise (possibly a CERT Olympics) on the Saturday afternoon.

Our first fundraiser for this event is a Pancake Breakfast on Sunday, November 29th at the Tierra Verde Fire Station. The details and registration site is listed below. It is our goal that no Lealman CERT member will be asked to pay more than $50 to attend the LEAPN2CERT Conference and this is only made possible through fundraising and generous donations from our communities.

Please save the date and if you are interested in helping to organize this conference, please email me.

 
CERT TRAINING / ACTIVATION OPPORTUNITIES 
(Please utilize your Mission Manager (MM) account to RSVP to events and training opportunities mentioned below. 
If you are currently not a MM users please email me and we will set-up an account.)

10/26/2015: EXERCISE PREP - On Monday, October 26th the Lealman Fire District will be hosting a training session to better prepare members for the Full-Scale Exercise on Saturday, November 14th. Topics will include incident command, search & rescue, and triage. If you are planning to attend the exercise, this training session will provide a good review to better prepare you. The meeting will start at 1830hrs. RSVP on MM.

11/05/2015: CERT RADIO NET - The Lealman CERT Amateur Radio Club ''KI4ZKR'' holds a bi-monthly net on the 1st & 3rd Thursday of each month beginning at 8pm. The net starts on the N4AAC Repeater 145.310 MHz, PL tone of 103.5. Following the Repeater check-in the net moves to the CERT Simplex Frequency of 146.580 MHz. This is a controlled net. Please listen to and follow net controls instructions. RSVP on MM.

11/5,6,7,8/2015: ST. JUDE'S FALL FESTIVAL - Starting on Thursday, November 5th and continuing through Sunday the 8th, Lealman CERT will be staffing an informational booth at the St. Jude's Fall Festival. The Festival located on the NEC of 9th Avenue & 66th Street North is one of the Bay Area's largest festival. Our objective during the festival will be to get people interested in preparedness and to join CERT. We have divided the days into 3-5 hour time slots. Click Here to register for St. Jude's Fall Festival.

11/14/2015: CERT FULL-SCALE EXERCISE - On Saturday, November 14th, the Lealman CERT program in partnership with Eckerd College, Seminole CERT, and Pinellas County MRC will be hosting a full-scale exercise incorporating Incident Command, Search & Rescue, and Triage.

The event is designed to place approx. 10 CERT members at a time into a disaster situation. CERT members are asked to sign up for one 60-minute slot. We ask that you arrive at your selected time. DO NOT be early as the exercise begins the moment you arrive!! As currently scheduled, we will have an exercise starting at the top of each hour from 9am until 12pm. 

The exercise begins when the first CERT member arrives and the exercise will continue for about 40 minutes. A debrief will take place following each exercise. At the conclusion of the debrief, you will be dismissed as we will be setting up for the next group. The planning committee has decided on this format as many times these exercises result in more rescuers than victims and this is not a realistic scenario. 

You should be dressed for search & rescue activities, i.e. - long durable pants (jeans), shirt, durable shoes or boots, and the PPE equipment provided to you. You should also have CERT forms in case you are the incident commander. 

Each participant will receive a follow-up email on Friday the 13th (scared yet) that will provide additional details as well as the rally point. 

11/16/2015: CAC MEETING - The Lealman CERT Advisory Committee meets each month on the 3rd Monday at 6:30pm to discuss and coordinate upcoming training sessions and activities. All CERT members are welcome to attend and your input is important in shaping the future of Lealman CERT. The meeting is held in the Training Room at Fire Station #18. RSVP on MM.

11/19/2015: CERT RADIO NET - The Lealman CERT Amateur Radio Club ''KI4ZKR'' holds a bi-monthly net on the 1st & 3rd Thursday of each month beginning at 8pm. The net starts on the N4AAC Repeater 145.310 MHz, PL tone of 103.5. Following the Repeater check-in the net moves to the CERT Simplex Frequency of 146.580 MHz. This is a controlled net. Please listen to and follow net controls instructions. RSVP on MM.

11/29/2015: PANCAKE BREAKFAST FUNDRAISER - On Sunday, November 29th we will be hosting a pancake breakfast to raise funds for the LEAPN2CERT Conference in February at the Tierra Verde Fire Station #21 located at 540 Sands Point Drive. We really need all CERT members to assist in this fundraiser as we expect a big crowd. Set-up will begin at 6:30am with the actual event taking place from 8am until 11:30am. Please consider helping us with this fundraiser as all money raised will in effect lower your cost to attend the LEALN2CERT Conference. If you have a griddle you can bring to the event, please list this in the "comments" section when you RSVP on MM.

LOGO


MISSION MANAGER 

The Lealman CERT program has now been utilizing Mission Manager for over two years. This program has been successful in helping to coordinate the program by providing a calendar of events, timekeeping, and if their had been a disaster, controlling the incident through a defined ICS structure that provides for increased accountability and communications.

When we started this program it was a free service. Because of its success, it is no longer free. However starting in 2016, we will be transferring over to a new site that will include CERT programs throughout the eight county footprint we refer to as the Tampa Bay Area. Funding for this project has been secured through the Tampa Bay Urban Area Security Intuitive (TB-UASI) a Department of Homeland Security Grant Program.

With this transfer comes accountability. We currently have 114 active members registered on our Mission Manager account. However, 73 of these members logged any time between October 1st 2014 and September 30th 2015 (FY2015). This means that one-third of our "active" members were not active! 

While I realize that I (we) need to address the underlying issues of why more of our members are not really active, we also need to be accountable to our taxpayers. As part of our grant proposal to TB-UASI, we stated that we will review annually the Mission Manager accounts and place members as "in-active" that have not volunteered any time in the past year. When we move forward with migrating the accounts in the first quarter of 2016, we will be forced to move only active members over to the new platform. 

If you have any suggestions on how to increase activity in our CERT Program, PLEASE email me.