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chris_j6n
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| Hi- I need a good book. We are doing a house swap with some friends from Washington DC and I would like something good to read. Maybe about Jefferson or Gettysburg or American Revolution or ...
Last summer we took a road trip to Yellowstone. In the car, we listened to audio books. This worked stunningly well, if we stopped the book to discuss driving directions there was a chorus of complaints from the back seat. It also damped the amount of bickering and rough housing. The three books were about the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Indian tribe, and Lost In Yellowstone.
-chris | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment   |
| The Tea Fire was in the news this weekend. Here is a first person report from my Aunt Sue. (Her husband John is my Mom's brother). It is a far cry from the early days when the fire hoses from the many fire departments had different sized connectors on the end. -chris
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Reported+Start+tea+Fire
Emergency Command Post - Lower Manning Park
Tea Fire.kmz - maps.google.com
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=113022420691920912386.00045b9ef1712164139a6
John and I belong to MERRAG (Montecito Emergency Response and Recovery Group), a volunteer group attached to the Montecito Fire Department. We were called for a full activation on Thursday right after the fire broke out. We responded to the Montecito Fire Dept. where we helped set-up the ICS (Incident Command System....this is the system used by fire and law enforcement agencies throughout the country to manage emergency operations). This location is where the Incident Commander was established to manage the "Tea Fire (so called because it started somewhere near the historic 1900's "Tea House" located around the area North of Mountain Drive/Coyote Road. From there, John and I spent all Thursday night on traffic control at the intersection of San Ysidro Road/Santa Rosa Road right in front of Montecito Union School) bringing in the "strike teams" to the staging area. Since the fire began in Montecito, Montecito Fire Department was the Incident Command Center (@ the Fire Dept); so the "staging area" had to be set up somewhere close by with a big enough parking lot to bring in fire trucks and all the staging equipment, which was designated as the parking lot of Lower Manning Park. It was really awesome how quickly the strike teams began to arrive.....a "strike team" is made up of five engines and one pick-up, or some type of all-terrain vehicle, with the "Strike Team Leader" and his driver. By 10 pm there were "strike teams" lined up all the way down San Ysidro Road to the freeway entrance, so we had to start lining them up double file on San Ysidro Road. The Strike Team Leader then heads down to the staging area and gets his team's assignment, they go over maps (because all of them were from out of the area....I don't remember all of the names even though I was going to try...Hermosa Beach, Orange County, Ventura City and County, Glendale Fire, Office of Emergency Services Fire, City and County of L.A. Fire, Federal City...and the list went on and on), then the leader and the five engines head off to their assigned area to begin work. As the strike teams were coming in, the hand crews began to arrive...trucks bearing 10-12 men/women began coming in around midnight and we had them "bed down" in the grassy areas of Montecito Union School and the YMCA parking lot so they could get some sleep before they began going on foot through all the burn areas to put out smoldering embers. At 2 am, we still had trucks lined up along San Ysidro, but we were down to single file by this time (much to the relief of the CHP!) The "staging area" was really amazing to see. Our (MERRAG's) van was centered there as a command center for all of the MERRAG volunteers who were assigned around the Montecito area. Also, the "Staging Manager" from Montecito Fire Department was assigned there with a Battalion Chief as they were assigning the strike teams to their various locations. As the winds suddenly swept the fire over toward Santa Barbara (and Marian's area), it swept it away from our area. If the winds had continued the direction where they originally started, we were on evacuation orders (in fact, while we were working @ the staging area....we had our dogs "duffle bags" and our papers packed and told our renter his only "job" was to pack the dogs in his van and "get out"; so, all of Montecito toward the ocean might have been evacuated. (In fact, when the wind changed the fire's direction....it completely went the opposite direction from Oprah's house....no matter what you hear on the news!) As the winds swept toward Santa Barbara, the strike teams were sent up to Santa Barbara to assigned positions.
I know that I have seen fire information on the news before and they have shown pictures of a "staging area"; however, until you see one and are involved in the staging process, it is really it is completely unimaginable how it works. But, because it is a uniform system throughout the country, everyone knows how the system operates and knows what their part is in the process. When the strike teams began to leave here as the winds died down, they headed down toward Western Ventura and L.A. counties to start the process all over again down there.
Yesterday all afternoon and until about 8:30 pm, John and I worked the information center where MERRAG had set up the van. We had a large scale map showing the perimeter of the fire and a "prediction" of the Sundowner winds for last night. They were predicted to blow north in the Los Padres National Forest toward Ventura and west L.A. County (which they did because winds were heavy in Ventura all day yesterday....and then fires started in Sylmar, Porter Ranch, again, and in that area.) We had crowds of people all day coming to the van to find out when they could go back to their homes, if we knew of the addresses of homes which had been burned (I am almost glad we didn't...we knew streets and areas, but not addresses....as I wouldn't have wanted to been the one to tell someone their home had burned), the possibility of more evacuations that night; and we had those coming in who knew their homes were burned and wanted to know when they could go back in the area to see how bad it was. It was a good place for people to congregate, talk to neighbors, meet new neighbors and feel they had more of a "handle" on their lives because they had somewhere to go for information. The van/information center will be open all day Saturday (John and I get the day off for a rest) and then on Sunday, so we will be there Sunday afternoon.
Of course John has been involved before (as a Capt. in the Montecito Fire Dept. for 33 years...but even he said how so much has changed after he retired.) The organization throughout the country is so interesting as any Fire Dept. can go anywhere in the country and use the ICS (Incident Command System) and know that incoming strike teams and engine companies will know exactly how the system work, and what their job will be in that emergency. This system is not only for fires, but earthquakes, terrorist attacks, hazardous materials spills, any kind of emergency.
I was sorry to hear about our organist's (Steve H) home. Westmont did lose some of their buildings and damage to some of their dorms. The Emergency Coordinator for Westmont College is also in MERRAG, in fact he was President last year. We learned then that Westmont has a gymnasium which is a total fire proof/safety building. So, at the threat of a fire, they don't have to evacuate students and staff, they are all evacuated to the gym. This eliminates two problems for Montecito (at least during a fire), (1) they are not among the many who would be trying to evacuate on the small winding roads in Montecito and (2) It means that the emergency resources are not "tied" up with trying to evacuate a college when there are a lot of other areas to evacuate. Montecito is an emergency worker's nightmare because of the small winding roads and everyone has to head down to the ocean to go either East or West on 101. It really is a traffic nightmare, and all emergency agencies recognize that is the situation.
Hope the above narrative has been informative.
Love,
Sue
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| See what is happening weather wise on our piece of the third coast. The weather station and webcam on the water intake crib east of the downtown Chicago lake front was repaired Thursday morning. Check it out for pictures of the Chicago skyline, wind, temperature, etc.
http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/metdata/chi/
GLERL - The NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory is one of 7 Federal research laboratories within the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research line office of NOAA. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| 2008 Red Cross Hero Award - My Mom is a remarkable person. She has been with the Red Cross since the 70s, is an experienced disaster volunteer and has run every kind of disaster large and small - floods, wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, plane/bus/train crashes. Over the years, she has trained thousands of other volunteers and is a past chair person for disaster services.
http://www.chicagoredcross.org/general.asp?SN=483&OP=484&SUOP=1417&SUOP2=2363&IDCapitulo=VF223FBDFD
When nothing is spared - When fire ruins a home, it takes everything, including medication. "After you've been through a tragedy, you can beg or borrow most things, but you can't beg or borrow pills that you need or a particular piece of medical equipment."
She is a nurse - When we moved to Chicago she worked for the Chicago Red Cross drawing blood. Then she cared for premature babies (in the Neonatal Intensive Care Nursery at UChicago) so my sister and I could get half off our tuition. After that she became a full-time Red Cross disaster volunteer.
She is also the toughest person I know. She searched for body parts near O'Hare after the 1979 DC10 crash that killed 273. In September of 1992, she went to Kaua'i for five weeks after Hurricane Iniki, for much of that time there was no power or phone service. She returned a few days after hot water became available. She has been on the Aviation Incident Response (AIR) Team since it was formed and went to Los Angeles and then Taipei to assist the families of those in the Halloween 2000 747 crash. She also responded to the September 2001 attack on New York City.
In 2000 she won a Golden Rule Outstanding Volunteer award - Giustina (Tina) Johnston has spent the last 24 years using her nursing skills to dispense aid, relief and healing with the American Red Cross of Greater Chicago. As a direct service volunteer, Tina has served on-site at 12 national disasters and countless local disasters. She started the Disaster Rap newsletter, restructured the department into a centralized organization and increased the number of nurses on the disaster Action Team.
http://www.redcross.org/news/archives/2000/11-16-00.html
http://www.aegis.com/news/ct/2005/CT050903.html
http://volunteerinfo.net/2000%20awards.pdf
Red Cross - American Red Cross of Greater Chicago responds to 3 to 5 disasters every single day, 98 percent of these are residential fires. Volunteers are deployed any time, day or night, to provide assistance and comfort to those affected. It is the second-largest Red Cross chapter in the Nation, serving more than 8.3 million people in Cook, Lake, Kane, Kendall, DuPage, McHenry and Will counties.
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| (2008-March-09) Bishop Kane presents Senior Patrol Leader D. Johnston of St. Margaret Mary parish and Boy Scout Troop 822 with a Community Service and Social Justice award for making an outstanding contribution to the Church.
300 teenagers were recognized and honored at the Archdiocese Vicariate II Youth Leadership Awards banquet on Sunday March 9. The awards are given by the Office of Catechesis and Youth Ministry of the Archdiocese of Chicago.
http://www.fortdearborn.org | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I was pretty shaken up by the rollover on Sunday evening. I hope I never see something like that again. But I was thinking about how modern life can be pretty good. People pulled over immediately and started helping kids out of the SUV as a cloud of steam erupted from the front end. AJ called 911 at 10:04 and within a couple minutes there was a tremendous response - 5 ambulances, 2 Illinois state trooper cars, maybe 10 Chicago police cars, around a half dozen fire trucks, and a couple of minuteman trucks.
I think it is a miracle that modern medicine can bring back someone critically injured. Of the 6 kids in the SUV - 2 girls had no (physical) injuries, 2 had minor injuries like a broken nose and were able to go home, and 2 boys were in critical condition (but not dead!) after being ejected during the crash.
Peace,
-chris
I wish there was a way to check up on how they are doing. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Some times it is better to do nothing.
What has been lost in the current din is how remarkable the market has been in creating new mortgage products through which low and moderate income families have been able to acquire homes. During this period home ownership has soared to levels never before imagined.
http://www.dailyobjective.com/2008/01/subprime-and-election.html | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Wednesday was Ash Wednesday. Tuesday was Mardi Gras and also the primary election day in Illinois or Super Fat Tuesday. I worked as a (rookie) election judge, which was fun and interesting and grueling.
I woke at 4am, arrived at 5am, opened the polls at 6am sharp, polls closed at 7pm, we finished counting and balancing blank ballots around 8:30, and I arrived home around 9pm. I had already met one of my fellow judges on Monday afternoon when we setup the booths, put up the posters, and scoped out the church basement.
In theory there are 5 election judges at each polling place - we only had 3. Myself and a couple - Mrs B is a nurse and her husband Mr R is a retired Chicago police officer who teaches part-time at the police academy. The fourth person on our a team was our tech, Mr D. He is a college student. All of them were pleasant and hard working, which helped make it a great day.
It was interesting dealing with current voting technology. I came away strongly favoring the paper ballots which the voter then ran through the scanner. The touch screen had some advantages, one of which is that it could prompt you if you skipped voting for an office. It also had some pretty serious disadvantages and was unusable for much of the day. Our voting card activator was DOA and it took 5 hours and *many* phone calls to get a replacement. One disadvantage of the paper ballot is that undervoting is a frequent problem. For example, in my precinct Clinton received the most votes however Obama convention delegates received the most votes.
But at the end of the day the paper ballot is a primary document and an auditor can go back and easily determine what you did. They could also run the ballots through another scanner and/or visually tally them. On the other hand there really is no way to verify that the votes recorded in the touch screen match what the voters entered.
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=41.9458,-87.763869&t=h&z=19
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| It seems that Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are draining water at an unexpected rate. Michigan-Huron is dropping 2.5 billion gallons per day and Lake Erie is rising.
It amuses me greatly that in the current day a normal person like myself can access something like Dredging News online. Not too long ago only experts would know about this stuff.
Dredging News Online --
http://www.sandandgravel.com/news/article.asp?v1=10285
Georgian Bay Association blames man-made hole for falling water levels in Great Lakes
News - August 15, 2007
Two years after specialists first linked declining water levels in Lakes Michigan and Huron to US and Canadian navigation dredging, riverbed mining and shoreline alteration projects near Port Huron and Sarnia, research released this week has found that a river "drain hole" is sucking away triple the amount of water previously estimated - causing widespread ecological harm throughout the middle Great Lakes.
Photo credit --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Chicago_Skyline_Hi-Res.jpg | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
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chris_j6n
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