Lack of Info/Specs on NHQ Website

[Eclipse]

At one point, some folks in my wing were discussing the idea of training enough people and registering the wing as a CERT team. That never came to fruition, but it's an interesting idea.

It's good that it never happened. They clearly do not understand CERT. CERT is local. CERT is supposed to have a response time measured in minutes, not hours or days.

Exactly - if the unit members all happened to be from the same town (which is how it's supposed to work, but rarely does), that's be one thing, but having a CERT team spread out over the usual unit geo-locations won't be much good.  In some cases, the team members might not be able to get back into area to help.

CERT is about low-level trained citizens first and foremost helping themselves, and then digging their way out from trouble.

[RADIOMAN015]

Let's see about CAP's ground ES ops:

Shelter Management -- Not a defined CAP mission but accomplished by the Red Cross.  IF you want to do this, join the local Red Cross chapter.  Some local communities do not use the Red Cross but operate their own shelters, but generally would look at using CERT personnel OR have even used other community support organizations such as the Lions Club or even Kiwanis.  The Red Cross doesn't necessarily have the resources to cover every community. 

Damage Assessment -- Presently not on the ground side, again a Red Cross function, so again if you want to do this join the local Red Cross.

Cleaning Out/Up After Bad Weather --  Well there's a perfect example of 'volunteer for a day' opportunities.  You don't have to belong to ANY organization, and your commitment is for one day and there's organization including churches that ask for these volunteers (our unit with cadets has done this after the tornado in the recent past -- you don't need any ES training to do this).
Also I would include things such as sandbag preparation.

CERT - Well the various emergency managers (county, support area, local town/city) really determines how they will use these trained members.  I've seen one county use them for traffic control, shelter management, welfare checks, checkpoints for runners/bikers.  Usually the smaller towns/counties will have a greater need for these types of volunteers.  One county I know of also trained everyone to test/achieve their technician class amateur radio license and got a grant to buy about 50 portable VHF/UHF combo radios that is used to support the team both simplex comms and via a local ham repeater club's facilities.   Again IF there's an interest in this joining and training in YOUR specific community it is best again as an individual and not as a CAP member UNLESS your unit and most of its' personnel are located in the same community for an easy response.

STORM SPOTTER/SKYWARN PROGRAM --- Again this 3 to 4 hour training is offered to individuals who then have an 800 number they can call and are issued an ID number also.  Many Amateur radio operators are heavily involved in this since real time reports can be transmitted to a net control station that is either on line computer, telephone or even via echolink with the local NWS office.   You don't have to be a CAP member to do this (or even a ham radio operator).   Our wing tried to get folks interested in this in the eastern part of the state a couple years back without much success. (actually I'm trying for the western part this year via a community training event).

AMATEUR RADIO OPERATORS -- RACES & ARES Programs -- Basically these are radio communications support programs to disaster agencies (e.g. Red Cross, Salvation Army) and government agencies (local, county, state).   The government side wants to see operators with ICS level training, and many of the local community emergency managers will utilize ARO's to assist in the EOC in many ways including operating the government radios, answering phones, logging etc.    Probably CERT training is a lead in on the government side.  Smaller communities likely have more of an interest in volunteers than larger cities.

I think on the ground side CAP can do well with photo recon (in conjunction with airborne photo recon assets).  Surely with tornadoes & other damaging wind aircraft at airports can be destroyed damaged and the typical ELT hunting challenge will present itself.    There's also a program called Points of Distribution (there's discussion on CT about this)  where people in a disaster drive up and get supplies and than drive off (but again this might be a CERT activity) and it really depends what community you can adequately support with members that can easily travel or live in the community.

Also the other issue is the comfort level with cadets providing assistance in any of these areas.  Normally for the weather spotter program it's 16 years old.  I'm not aware of the Red Cross having a junior volunteer program for any of its' disaster response/relief activities.  A small number of communities have a junior fire fighter program and are aware of how helpful trained teenagers can be to them.  I think it's a selling point that trained teenagers can be very helpful in certain functions and one needs to invite local officials to exercises to see the CAP teenagers in action.   Also there's the nagging issue of command and control.  Lets say you only have 3 people on a CERT, how do you effectively control them when they are part of a 10 person team

Personally it seems to me that CAP still requires too much time for training (sometimes travelling greater than 40 miles for this training) that basically we have no or little missions for and other local community programs offer a better chance for utilization.

RM
   

[PHall]

And yet you're still a dues paying member. What's your point RM?

[Eclipse]

Damage Assessment -- Presently not on the ground side,

Correction, presently not doing it in your wing.

[lordmonar]

Command and control?  Easy....you task them out to the other agency.  They belong to that agency for the duration.

That is pretty simple.

Required training takes too long.....I don't really think so...not for the level of work that we are expecting them to be able to do.

I really, hate the "if you want to X....well just go join organisation Y".  We can and should be looking for needs that our community has that CAP can fill.   So long as it does not detract from our primary mission....there is no end to what we can do and offer our community.

The key here and always has been.....local units, groups and wings need to actively engage with our local government agencies, other service providers and coordinate our activities.  We need to be engaged with the ARC, RACES, AERS, CERT, the fire department, police department, EMT services, and work with them so that we are partnerns in helping our community, state and nation.

This is where you work out command and control issues.  This is where you work out age issues.  This is where you work out training and certification issues.

One of the biggest gripes I hear all the time is "This big thing happened in my state and CAP never got the call.".
That is beacuse CAP failed to establish the partnership with their local agencies, so that the knew we exist, knew how to call us out and knew how we will intergrate with their plans and policies.

Training requirements....are training requirements.  There is nothing you can do about them.  Everyone has them and everyone has to jump through those hoops.

[Spaceman3750]

(sometimes travelling greater than 40 miles for this training)

Wow, so the training isn't on your front porch so you're not interested and that's someone else's fault? I drive double that to my regular squadron meetings - before I do any driving for my group job, which includes 5 squadrons and 26 counties (in fact, I just drove 190 miles round trip to our easternmost squadron tonight).

Also, that's just visiting squadrons on their meeting nights to help with ES (I don't visit them all in a single month, though I do want to try for one every couple of months). About once a month I'm usually either driving around an extra time in my group doing an exercise, going to a wing-run exercise (four hours upstate), or both.

And that doesn't even approach what others do.

[EMT-83]

After Hurricane Irene and the freak October snow storm hit the northeast, we were specifically requested for shelter operations, food and water distribution and damage assessment.

It's all about establishing relationships before the fecal matter hits the air oscillating device.

[RADIOMAN015]

(sometimes travelling greater than 40 miles for this training)

Wow, so the training isn't on your front porch so you're not interested and that's someone else's fault? I drive double that to my regular squadron meetings - before I do any driving for my group job, which includes 5 squadrons and 26 counties (in fact, I just drove 190 miles round trip to our easternmost squadron tonight).

Also, that's just visiting squadrons on their meeting nights to help with ES (I don't visit them all in a single month, though I do want to try for one every couple of months). About once a month I'm usually either driving around an extra time in my group doing an exercise, going to a wing-run exercise (four hours upstate), or both.

And that doesn't even approach what others do.

Squadron's are suppose to be the community level out reach of CAP.   Surely, IF we can we want to provide all the training we can at the squadron level, or get the training from another local community based organization.  Regarding support to the community (we are located in), that should be our goal. My unit draws members from over 20 communities surrounding the unit.  Most are not from the community that the unit is located in.

I salute you for your travel and dedication,  BUT again gas prices/costs can damper the most enthusiastic dedicated member.  IF your budget won't allow you to do it you just can't do it.   Last year our unit had to stop supporting some travel in the van and have the individual members pay for it because it just was getting too expensive and relation to other programs.

RM

[RADIOMAN015]

And yet you're still a dues paying member. What's your point RM?

Well what I'm trying to say is that CAP ain't the only volunteer organization at the community level engaged in disaster relief/emergency response.   There really was NO national vision/strategic plan on the use of CAP ground teams other than the typical plane crash, ELT hunt, and maybe missing person searches.   There's a lot of things that could have been done at the National level that never happened (e.g. no renewed MOA with Red Cross).

Again, it might be better for individual members to join other community level organizations that have specific functions which they accomplished successfully for many years.  This is an individual member choice to check out and make an informed decision based upon training and actual/potential use of that training. (e.g. storm spotter/Skywarn is a program that is easy to get trained on and you can be active quite quite a bit of the time). 

My personal opinion is CAP is much more cautious on trying to expand national (and even wing level) ground team missions than aircraft/flying missions because GT usually involved more personnel (and thus more problems, especially with getting senior member involvement).  With aircraft you may be looking just at a 3 member air crew, IC, and one CAP radio station for support for a photo recon type mission.

Others have mentioned that CAP members need to "stay in their lane".  As far as ES is concerned CAP as an organization does have a "lane", in ES, and unfortunately at this point on the ground side it is a decreasing mission rather than an increasing mission.
RM
   

[RiverAux]

Is anyone surprised that CAP barely acknowledges being the single largest ground SAR organization in the country?  I've said it before and I'll say it again, that ground SAR is the only real area of potential mission growth for CAP that could actually be significant on a national scale.  If we fully exploited our ground SAR capabilities as they are now and what they could be with some support at the national and wing levels, we would really be a major player rather than an afterthought in most states.  Other than a few western states, I'd say that the local CAP squadron is the closest thing to any kind of SAR organization in most counties in the US. 

Now, in regards to other ground based DR missions, I have long argued that CAP needs to develop some sort of doctrine about what we should be doing.  We need a subset of ground DR mission types that we should specialize in across the country (while leaving flexibility for local units to do other things) and focus on them.  They don't have to exclusive CAP missions -- just because some other organizations do similar work doesn't mean that there isn't room for more. 

Keep in mind, this is our mission statement:

(4) To provide an organization of private citizens with adequate facilities to assist in meeting local and national emergencies.

So, we are not limited in any way in terms of what sort of ES missions we can undertake.