2023 National CERT Skills Competition Exercise

Today was the last day of the three-day CERT Skills Competition Exercise held as part of the 2023 National CERT Conference being held at the Hyatt Regency in Burlingame. Ten skills stations where 17 teams worked against the clock to earn high scores from judges at each station. I signed up at the last minute so was matched with a team comprised of CERT members from Alaska, Napa, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Redwood City and our own SMCFD.

Stations for evidence search and HazMat ID were new and interesting. It was a great opportunity to work with a random group of CERT members and we meshed fairly well, we’ll see if it was a podium finish or not.

The rest of my photos from the competition can be seen here.

June Belmont CERT Meeting Minutes

Topics presented by Pat Halleran included:

• 16 CERTs attended the recent CPR/AED/NarCan training session
• CERT National Conference this week
• Need CERT teams for the Foster City 4th of July event, three teams plus four ham radio operators for each shift
• CERT Summer Picnic planned for 7/30, Save The Date!
• National Night Out event on Aug 1
• Disaster Prep Day at the San Mateo Event Center 8/5
• Chili Cookoff in San Mateo Central Park 8/26
• First CERT class in Belmont in years, begins 8/29 (Skills Day 9/23)
• SMCFD Fire Station Open House 10/7
• CERT Holiday Party in the works, date is still TBD
• Cindy B discussed her June moulage experience with San Mateo PD

Link to the meeting slides presented.

Belmont CERT Radio-In-A-Box Upgrade

Belmont CERT’s current radio-in-a-box received a much needed upgrade recently. The upgrade now allows the radio, and the lithium phosphate (LiFePo4) battery, to operate via solar power. Unfortunately (or fortunately) in the course of the mods it was discovered that the original battery was no longer charging properly. Thanks to the Tim Wong CERT grant funding, components were procured to upgrade the existing radio unit AND to build a second one. This will result in each Belmont trailer being equipped with a portable ham radio capability.