Directors Dialogue May 2009

The SAR Council hopes that your units are getting involved with the "MAY FOR MEMBERSHIP" Drive. Christine Stuehrman, our chairman, has sent out flyers to all of our SAR units. Hopefully, your members are passing these out in your respective communities and asking folks to attend your May meeting. Christine will be contacting each unit to find out how many perspectives members you had in attendance or email her chrisstueh@aol.com New members are good for our units, please, just ask someone to join!

This past month was a very good month for the SAR Council and our SAR units. First, there were no callouts, good for the units. Secondly, what was good for the Council was that we received approvals from the Department for a number of our projects.

The location for the Civilian Volunteer Memorial has been approved. This memorial will be in the main lobby of Headquarters. There will be a meeting of the committee members prior to the SAR Council Meeting on May 20^th. The design will be finalized and the programs to raise the funds to complete this memorial will be discussed. This meeting will start at 6 p.m. with the Council meeting starting at 7.

Next, the OHVSAR standards were printed and sent out to all the committee members for their review. After a couple of small changes, they were retyped and sent on to Volunteer Forces for final acceptance. We are hoping that at the next Council meeting we can announce that these standards have been adopted.

The Christy Family and the department have approved the PR Trailer that we have been discussing. We told Joan Christy that if we used any of the monies from the Dean Christy Memorial Fund that we would get her approval. She is totally on board and loves the idea. We are in the process of raising funds and securing bids for the trailer. We would like to thank the members of the Morongo Basin SAR, East Valley Posse and Needles SAR for their $300.00 donations. If any other unit would like to participate please send a check to: Dave Nicolet, P.O. Box 1432, Morongo Valley, Cal. 92256. We still are about 50% short of reaching our goals for funds. Make the check payable to: IESARC and on the memo line, on the check, please enter "Trailer".

We also gained approval from VF to set up two SAR Council sponsored HELITAC Classes. The dates will be made available to you by next week and we are asking that you send three or four of your unit members to this class. This way your unit will not be responsible to have the minimum of 10 members attending. It still is our goal to have every unit certify at least three members.

As you can see, April was a good month and we are moving forward with a lot of programs that are going to benefit the SAR units of San Bernardino County.

Our APRS devices finally passed their final tests and are going to be used on a regular basis at our countrywide callouts. Thanks to Rich Dexter and John Amrhein for all of their hard and continuous work to get these up and running.

SAR Council T-shirts will be available for purchase at the next Council Meeting. Long sleeve and short sleeve shirts will be available for $15.00 and $12.50 respectively. These crew neck t-shirts are perfect to wear under your orange uniform shirts and will identify you as a SAR person when you have taken the orange shirt off Sizes small thru extra large are in stock. For 2XL and 3XL shirts we will be making a special order. Drop me an email and let me know that you would like to order and/or purchase.

TRBC began last weekend at Glen Helen North and the class is continuing again this weekend May 1^st to the 3^rd. Great job by all of those involved!

The 4^th Annual MSAR Countywide Training was held in Yucaipa on April 18^th. East Valley Posse and the MSAR Committee did an outstanding job of hosting this event. This event was well organized, had great scenarios, excellent food and good participation. Chief Stewart stopped by to say hello and Chief Fonzi and Sheriff Hoops attended the lunch. It was great to see all three of them supporting our efforts.

If you are interested in taking a four-hour orientation class for Urban SAR we have a class that will be available on July 18^th. If you are interested, please get a hold of Deputy John Hayes, the coordinator for Wrightwood SAR, and make your reservation. This will not be a certification, but it will give you some ideas on what to do in the event of a major earthquake. Contact information is on our www.sbsar.org website.

And last, but not least, please fill out your Unit Training Survey's that Corporal Whitten sent out a few weeks ago. These forms are due to VF by June 1^st.

I will see you at the next SAR Council Meeting on May 20^th ... until then.................

Be Safe
Dave Nicolet, Director
Inland Empire Search and Rescue Council
davenicolet@earthlink.net
760-363-7475 Home
760-831-5743 Cell