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.
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 was conceived by Battalion 2 Coordinators, Patrick Botz-Forbes and Tom Wirth who helped organized the first -of-its-kind event with the MWJN Board. There were about 150 participants including Mt. Washington Jessica residents in Map Your Neighborhood blocks, CERT members from Mt. Washington Jessica and all over Northeast LA and California State Reserves . We focused on Communications and Damage Assessment and found the cooperative venture a real force multiplier.We also learned a lot about what we would do differently next time.
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…(read more)
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… (read more)