Disaster Relief Ribbon - Outdated/Impossible Requirements?

[DBlair]

Looking over the requirements listed for the Disaster Relief Ribbon (without V), it appears to be seemingly impossible to earn this ribbon as the courses being required are no longer offered by the Red Cross.

Members were thinking of taking these courses in the hopes of earning the ribbon, but then upon looking over the courses offered, noticed that the Red Cross seems to have changed their courses since the CAPR39-3 was published.

Any thoughts on whether it is still possible to earn this ribbon... or do members just have to wait around for the next Presidentially-declared Disaster to get the DR ribbon with V attachment?



From CAPR39-3:

f. Disaster Relief Ribbon. Awarded for participation in five actual/evaluated disaster relief missions and completion of two of the following requirements:

(1) All of the following Red Cross courses:
(a) Introduction to Disaster Services: How the Red Cross Chapter Renders Emergency Assistance
(b) Disaster Damage Assessment
(c) Shelter Management

(2) The Red Cross course, Damage Assessment Supervision in Disaster

(3) The Red Cross course, Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation and Advanced First Aid

(4) Radiological Monitoring for Instructors

(5) Radiological Defense Officer Course

(6) Airborne Radiological Monitoring Course

(7) Participation in other equivalent disaster relief activities totaling at least 40 hours of activity certified by disaster relief agency. This could include any training similar to the above courses and/or actual mission activity (in addition to the five required missions).

[lordmonar]

Go with the course the most closely matches the original course.

4, 5, 6...I don't think that the Red Cross does anymore.

3. is no longer called advanced first aid....but the Red Cross still teaches a First Aid Course.

1&2...I am sure that the ARC has something that replaced these curse.

This is one of those "go with the spirit" of the rule situations.

YMMV

[Rescue826]

What about the myriad of State and FEMA courses that are 'better' than Red Cross?  Or what if you work in Emergency Mgt?

[Eclipse]

What about the myriad of State and FEMA courses that are 'better' than Red Cross?  Or what if you work in Emergency Mgt?

See #7.

ARC still offers equivalent courses, or you could go to "other" as accepted by your Wing's ESO.

The requirements are pretty subjective and loose, with no big deal to get the ribbon if you have the time.  There are some in my wing who
have multiple attachments on their's.

[James Shaw]

You can do this through the FEMA courses. You have to reach 40 combined hours which takes a while to do all of the courses. Look at the regs and it will give you a better idea.

[DBlair]

You can do this through the FEMA courses. You have to reach 40 combined hours which takes a while to do all of the courses. Look at the regs and it will give you a better idea.

As in the online ICS FEMA courses?

[Eclipse]

Subjective to the approval authority, but I don't know how you would validate hours with an online course, most of those FEMA courses
take about a break mid-way.

For me it would need to be in-face courses with some sort of certification from the course director.  I don't know that ICS 300 / 400 should count, either, since they are not specific to DR.

[Rescue826]

http://www.floridadisaster.org/TrainingCalendar/index.asp

Tons of DR related classes in Florida, for free!

[Fubar]

The five real/training disaster responses seems like the biggest barrier to earning this ribbon, at least in my area. Are you folks participating in that many real disasters or evaluated drills?

[Eclipse]

Again subjective to the approver, most Sarex's could / should have a DR component, and DR real-worlds are pretty common these days in GLR.

[RiverAux]

Or skip all that and find a way to participate in one presidential disaster. 

[Eclipse]

They are actually separate awards, worn separately.

(which reminds me, do any of the rack builders have the "V" as silver and accommodate multiple awards?  McChord does not.

[Fubar]

Again subjective to the approver, most Sarex's could / should have a DR component...

Would you mind sharing some of the scenarios you've seen used? Our roles in disaster relief seem undefined at best, I'm very curious about the training folks are using in this area.

[Eclipse]

Again subjective to the approver, most Sarex's could / should have a DR component...

Would you mind sharing some of the scenarios you've seen used? Our roles in disaster relief seem undefined at best, I'm very curious about the training folks are using in this area.

House to house well-being checks & population surveys.
Sandbagging
Communications relay
Flooding assessment (aerial and ground)
Building damage assessment
Area accessibility assessment (aerial and ground)
Transport of officials for aerial survey (FEMA, NOAA, local military base, local government, etc.)

Other than sandbagging, everything else can and should be considered for training, and all are missions my wing and region has recently been involved in as real-worlds.

[ol'fido]

Illinois used to hold two major mission exercises every year with multiple bases(northern, central, and southern parts of the state). In the spring, usually late April or early May there was a SARCAP to test search techniques. Then, in the fall, there was a SARDA to test disaster relief responses. This was in late September or early October. These weren't set up specifically for training. As I said, they were exercises. They usually lasted for only one day(Saturday) with some set up being done on Friday night.

I wish we could start doing something like this again in the wing.

[Eclipse]

The challenge is that with all the real-worlds, other activities, and the occasional weekend not doing CAP, there isn't a lot of weekends left, though I agree it would be nice to see more wing-level coordination of SAREx's.

We're walking into another eval season, so the next 6 months will be busy after having taken a year "off" from major exercises.

[James Shaw]

Subjective to the approval authority, but I don't know how you would validate hours with an online course, most of those FEMA courses
take about a break mid-way.

For me it would need to be in-face courses with some sort of certification from the course director.  I don't know that ICS 300 / 400 should count, either, since they are not specific to DR.

You can order a copy of a transcript from FEMA for the courses you have taken. Takes about 1 week for you to get the info. I sent my to NOC for credit and the ones that applied for CAP I got credit for in eservices. The others were preapproved and validated by my commander BEFORE I started them. Remember it is the contact hours that you need to add. I did alot more than was required but it helped when I presented the final tally to the commander.

[RiverAux]

You would have thought that they'd have updated these requirements when they just re-did the whole regulation.  But, to be fair, I sent in comments on the draft and I don't think I remembered how outdated these were either.

[ol'fido]

The challenge is that with all the real-worlds, other activities, and the occasional weekend not doing CAP, there isn't a lot of weekends left, though I agree it would be nice to see more wing-level coordination of SAREx's.

We're walking into another eval season, so the next 6 months will be busy after having taken a year "off" from major exercises.

That's why a lot of these ran one day rather than a whole weekend. I still think we need to have something like this annually. If we try to schedule around events other than wing level we might never have them. I think we should announce them and whoever shows up goes. That's what happens in the real world anyway. It's great if we could always have everbody there to train and exercise. You would get the most bang for your training buck that way. But If we could get these exercises established againI think people would find ways to get there. Real world missions don't have all our assets ready to go or utilize detailed OPSPLANs either. These would give us the chance to train like we operate.

[Major Carrales]

I think the courses that should serve as the Criteria for this award should be FEMA based (Since that is Emergency Management) and include completion of ICS-300 and 400.  That would provide the "rigor" as well as the "relevance" to the ribbon.

The original purpose of this ribbon was "Civil Defense," "Emergency Management" is the modern "politically correct" term for it.  FEMA training to the highest level is thus fitting and proper.