Updates | West Orange County CERT (Community Emergency Response Team for Western Orange County California)

6-14-2023 Training: An Amazing Presentation on Autism

Wow, what a meeting. Thanks to Robin Fairman who arranged to have the founding leadership from the AMUSE Foundation helped to give us new perspectives and awareness about people on the autism spectrum, their families, caregivers, and friends. The AMUSE (Advocating Maintaining Unity with Special-needs and Everyone) presentation provided valuable training and discussion regarding people who are on the autism spectrum and how their actions may be less predictable than others.

One of the concepts that was covered during the session was how to work with meltdowns, elopement (running) and de-escalation. Here’s a video to introduce the topic

AMUSE is an Orange county based 501(C)(3) certified non-profit organization with a mission of advocating, connecting, educating, and providing through art, music, and kindness. For more information about Autism Spectrum Disorder, please visit their website

West County CERT Assists in SBPD Investigation

West County CERT helps SBPD Investigation — **West County CERT assists in SBPD Investigation**

As many of you have heard SBPD arrested the suspect in the serious hit and run that occurred Saturday 2/11 at PCH and Main in Seal Beach. If you have not seen the video, it’s worth a look. There’s no blood or gore, but you can see the impact of the crash. Chief Henderson and the Department want to thank our CERT members who assisted during the follow up investigation last week that led to the arrest.

Please see the SBPD Press Release and the report here.

2022 Academy Recap

It was our West County CERT’s 23rd Academy. It’s the same Academy that was postpone twice, due to the pandemic – the third time is the charm apparently – and things went sideways and almost derailed it at the very last minute. And still thanks in no small part to the dedication and resourcefulness of our City Coordinators, our 23rd Academy was….

Amazing!

What an Academy!

We had almost 50 residents come together for the two Friday nights and Saturdays to work our way through the 20-hour CERT basic training program. Then Saturday afternoon, the graduates and current CERT members completed an awesome field exercise where we got to practice some of the skills we learned.

We had some great guest experts come in to share their experiences from the field too. Thanks to Carrie Scott for an informative disaster psychology session on our first Friday evening; Sgt John Krok for his medical assessment and bandaging instruction and the team from Falck Ambulance for the hands-on assist with each of our 8 teams of attendees. During our second Friday evening we had a sobering presentation regarding terrorism from Josh Goldmark.

Of course our Academy could not have happened without the tireless support from our Team Coordinators: Loree Erpelding, Ed Fleming, Robert Acosta, and Brian Gray. We cannot forget about all the team members who pitched in to help with the course: Kris Thomas, Debbie Charland, Michelle Charland, Jan Ridgeway, Dave Atkins, Anna Bilyk, Robin Fairman, Sandy McClure, Cathy Lopez, Emanual Aparicio, Candace Workman, Lance Smith, Art Remnet, Daniel Mahoney, Willie Ortega, Jean Daum, Richard Daum, Vicki Davio, Don Davio, Howard Neill, Lynn Selden, Tom Woodward, and Suzette Ryzner. If you pitched in and we left you off the list, please accept our apologies.

The Academy presented all sorts of opportunities for fun learning about utility turn off valves, how to put out fires (remember PASS, right?), and of course the medical triage and bandaging. Let’s not forget about patient transport, what to do in a terrorism event, and how to lift a dumpster with some wood and a crowbar.