Previous Preparedness Drills

With our roots in CERT and our commitment to Map Your Neighborhood, our organization takes practicing seriously. We fully believe that drills help reinforce what is learned and that confidence and competence that is created through practice. There is always someone who is willing to help and there is always something helpful that needs to be done. Neighborhood cooperation is its own reward.

2023 MYN Earthquake Drill – MYN Drill October 14, 2023 – We practiced as a neighborhood and in our individual blocks what we have learned to do in the event of a disaster. Our exercise is based on the Nine Steps of the Map Your Neighborhood program. MYN is based on knowing your neighbors, knowing who needs extra help and what collective resources your block has available. Here, Base Radio communicates with Block Search Team. Find out more about MYN

2020 – Great Shakeout and Radio Drill – On October 15, 2020 at 10:15am we all Dropped Covered and Held on. After 60 seconds, we all practiced our Map Your Neighborhood 9 Steps (the first 6 steps that we do at home). In lieu of step 7 which would have us all go to our Neighborhood Gathering Sites, we instead got on our walkie -talkies and tuned in to channel 5 for a neighborhood roll call. We concluded with a discussion of the Shakeout Drill and what we learned.

2019 CERT/MYN  Drill – 2 concurrent drills on Saturday October 5, 2019. The Map Your Neighborhood Drill  took place in the 17 of the 19 blocks that had had meetings and selected gathering sites. The CERT Drill took place in the non-MYN blocks and included an impressive mass-casualty simulated bus crash in Cleland Park.  Both drills focused on communications.

2017 MWJN MYN/CERT Combined Resources Drill” alt=”2019 CERT/MYN Drill” width=”150″ height=”150″ /> – 2 concurrent drills on Saturday October 5, 2019. The Map Your Neighborhood Drill  took place in the 17 of the 19 blocks that had had meetings and selected gathering sites. The CERT Drill took place in the non-MYN blocks and included an impressive mass-casualty simulated bus crash in Cleland Park.  Both drills focused on communications.

2016 MWJN – MYN El Niño Drill – The threat of an El Niño weather pattern promising to bring heavy rains and flooding during the winter of 2016-2017 promted us to hold a winter Map Your Neighborhood practice session in what turned out to be on a dry sunny day. It was good practice to review our 9-steps and to think about being armed with raingear and waterproof items. We also provided demonstrations of how to deal with driving through downed power lines (don’t! there are ways to safely get out your vehicle) and the teamwork of using sandbags to divert rainwater.

2015 “Map Your Neighborhood” Drill – MWJN Conducted its 2nd Annual Preparedness Drill, this time testing the block-by-block “Map Your Neighborhood” 9-step program. The Drill involved about 70 people in 5 blocks, who responded to an “earthquake”  by following the steps in the MYN  booklets.

MWJN CERT Earthquake Drill 10/18/14 – Our first Mt. Washington Jessica  drill – we had 150 participants including expertly made up “survivors”, 3 Search and Rescue Teams, a CART team to handle pets and over a dozen CERT trained volunteers.