Ben's last day in Arlington will be the 26th then moves to Austin to take over the position there. At the CERT meeting Thursday evening he revealed that his former Austin boss had called to ask him to apply for the position, which he felt "obligated" to do. Of course he was teasing. I'm sure he absolutely jumped at the chance to return to that department as its head. He is really excited to return to the type of work he most enjoys: helping people. We will all really, really miss him.
For now, Matt Miller will be taking over CERT. The CERT en Espanol is still scheduled for later this summer. The request is that now that we have 179 members that CERT itself take over more of the necessary functions, team creation, etc. He will also take Ben's place as duty officer during after-hour emergency events. The concern is that like many of the OEM personnel, he doesn't even live in Arlington and if he waits until a severe weather WARNING is issued or RACES net called, as happens too often, we radio operators will end up standing in the hall for extended periods waiting for some one to show up and let us in. It's an on-going apparently irreconcilable conundrum.
Irish Hancock, head of the OEM, will be taking over the Emergency Management Support Team. This is interesting in that almost all the original members have long since dropped out, due in most part because it's original function has been greatly changed to the point the group seems to have no current purpose other than to provide radio back up for CERT teams. That in itself is redundant because there's been a big push to get CERT members licensed and with their own radios.
UTA is presently setting up it's own Office of Emergency Management and will be using radio operators as well.
What we REALLY need is for SKYWARN spotters in Arlington to actually get out and spot. The last couple of weeks we've had a couple of non-RACES operators out and about, and one night as the storms moved across Arlington spotters from other cities came over to assist. Not good. Thankfully, turned out to be nothing of import.
With official temps hovering at 98 and 99, and storms staying west, no EOC storm work the past week.
AARL Field Day is Saturday the 27th. The Arlington Club will be at the Yacht Club on W. Arkansas from Saturday until 8am Sunday morning. All are invited to come try out the radios.
No comments:
Post a Comment