Our yearly Disaster Drill will be held on Sunday October 18, We have conducted Map Your Neighborhood training in more than 25 MYN Blocks to promote “neighbor helping neighbor” response in a widespread disaster.
2023 MWJM Disaster Drill
In the 10/18/26 training/practice Drill, we’d like people in each MYN Block to “check on their loved ones” in their house, then gather in their Block to check on their neighbors, then use 2-way radios to coordinate response resources with other Blocks. We will plant “incident” cards around the neighborhood for search teams to find and discuss an appropriate response to.
After the Block activities conclude, we invite people to gather at Five Points to review lessons learned, have refreshments, and meet neighbors.
Watch for more information here and from your Block leaders!
As part of our preparation for our RADIO DRILL on July 26, we are offering a guided workshop hosted by Pierre Landry via Zoom on Wednesday, July 8 from 7-8:30 pm. We will be covering:
Ben during the 2019 Drill – right before the sprinklers went off behind him
Every year we try to have a drill to practice our Map Your Neighborhood skills and sometimes to coordinate with our local Community Emergency Response Teams. The pandemic has made such team efforts unlikely and even unsafe. This year we will focus on Communications through a Drill using walkie talkies from our homes.
We won’t be going to our gathering sites but we can form “pretend teams” on the radio. There won’t be any incident cards to find, we’ll just discuss various possibilities over the radios.
Everyone stays at their home location, uses their radio
Block TEAMS check in with their BASE Operator (there are 22 of these)
BASE Operators check in with their HUB Operators (there are 5 of these)
HUB Operators check in with STAGING Operator (Only 1 of these)
Practice passing information through the network
Virtual Debriefing on Zoom or on FRS Channel 5
In a real disaster, being able to communicate with your neighbors is extremely important. We’ve been trained to do this by all going to the same place to coordinate a response plan. If something major were to happen during at stay at home pandemic, we would need another way to account for everyone. We have our contact lists, but if power were to go out and cell towers overloaded, our battery operated walkie-talkies would be a much better bet than phones or email/text
We will have several opportunities (see News and Events) to practice and get our radios in working order before the drill. If you don’t know where yours are, now’s a good time to look. Please plan to participate on Sunday, July 26 from 2-4 pm. What else did you think you were going to do that day??
Did your walkie -talkie work as planned during the drill? Are you overwhelmed by technology and need a little hand-holding to get started? Can you turn it on but don’t know what to say or when to say it? Do you understand everything there is to know about using radios but wish your neighbors had better training?
COME TO A SPECIAL RADIO WORKSHOP
Wednesday, Oct 16 from 6:30 – 7:30 pm
Coptic Church – 4900 Cleland Ave. 90042
(downstairs – walk down the driveway on the left side of the church as you’re facing it and enter through the doorway on your right)
Bring your radios (whether you purchased them yourself or received a set for your block)
We will go over:
Turning radios on and off
Charging, battery care and maintenance
Changing channels
Push-to-talk
Effective protocols (what to say)
Our Mt. Washington Jessica radio plan
Challenges of our hilly neighborhood
What is a repeater and what you need to know about it
What worked and didn’t with radios during our last drill
