h. brown
Photo by Luke Thomas
By h. brown
March 24, 2009
Pretty much everyone agrees that San Francisco will experience a disaster, natural or man-made, and that we’ll need some kind of paramilitary force in place for at least a short while to deal with it.
From cops to firefighters to Homeland Security, they agree that a potential life-saving force is possible through the creation and implementation of a volunteer program designed to train high-school students in disaster response.
The major bone of contention here is whether the School District stays with their traditional JROTC classes, moves to a SERV (Student Emergency Response Volunteers) pilot program, or is able to craft a mix of the two.
I support offering both programs, or a mix of the two.
I spoke before last Thursday’s meeting of the City and School District’s Select Committee, during the last half hour of the hearing in which the District presented sketchy details of the SERV program. Listen to the words of the Deputy Director of the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Response Rob Dudgeon’s (one sharp cookie)Â supportive comments about the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) aspects of such a program.
Basically Dudgeon recognizes that no other cities in the United States has such a program and that he feels SERV would fit perfectly with the mission of DHS. That’s the kind of thing you want to hear when you’re looking at a set of courses such as the ones I’ve put together.
My purpose here is for the SFUSD to continue their resolution for re-instating the traditional JROTC curriculum until they’ve explored combining JROTC with these SERV offerings:
1. Working with SFPD to train students to set-up protected perimeters around multiple disaster zones.
2. Setting up tents for medical and communications triage and clearing and marking landing zones for evacuation helicopters. Set-ups include full maps of locale and firing up emergency generators for lights and computer access as needed by senior officers.
3. Identifying working water sources, hydrants to reservoirs, marking them and communicating their locations.
4. Transporting rescue equipment from neighborhood storage modules to disaster zones.
5. Beginning a stream of on-site feedback to the Emergency Command Center via pre-formatted reports.
6. Moving manual pumps and hose carts to reservoirs nearest fire ground, where water mains are broken and motorized equipment access is blocked.
7. Basic firefighting by SFFD-trained students in areas where there are no professional personnel available.
8. Immediate rescue operations by SERV as needed, evacuation and transportation to medical triage centers.
9. Directing citizens and their pets to safe areas for evacuation. Enter survivors’ names into pre-set databases.
10. Shutting down all compromised utilities and transmitting task completions into pre-programmed central data system.
11. Remove bodies, bagging and tagging by address and name. Maintaining a mobile morgue and creating and managing mass graves using lime and other disinfectants to prevent disease, if necessary.
12. Rescue operations using equipment whether large (back hoe to manual ladders) or manual ‘Jaws of Life’ to pry bars.
13. Training in First Aid, vital signs stabilization and CPR, transportation to MASH-type medical facilities.
That’s just a start. There’s nothing that says that SERV and JROTC cannot be combined. It is certainly worth a try.
The Hunger Site
May 7, 2009 at 12:36 am
I like SERV but I hate JROTC. Why should we adults be teaching our kids, in our schools no less, about the military? Especially so in a community such as ours that is minority. It’s about privilege and guns. And engaging in billion dollar wars such as ‘Nam and Iraq.
March 29, 2009 at 1:37 pm
I love the comments.
I would think that the same people who think that a person under 18 can make the choice, like I think, to have an abortion or not would also think the same person can make the choice on weather to join JROTC or not.
These dreamy liberals who are always the first to scream hypocrisy have the self awareness of a child.
Let the parents and kids decide and you know it all liberals can decide things for your own lives.
March 27, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Nobody really gives a shit about JROTC.
It’s just an issue the “moderates” and rednecks use to flog the opposition and/or camouflage their class biases.
Oh, and Fiona (Me Too!) Ma can use it. For a while.
March 26, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Hey brookse32,
That’s a weird name. Are you a cyborg? I also opposed JROTC anywhere anytime. I favor ROTC. We need a military and that’s an avenue where you can get a college education before you go overseas and get beheaded.
h.
March 26, 2009 at 9:17 am
They train regularly in their closet? What kind of training is that? 😉
In all seriousness though brother. The US Military needs to get the hell out of our public schools – period.
No JROTC of any kind, ever, anywhere.
March 25, 2009 at 11:18 am
Brian,
I’m not re-inventing the wheel here. The Swiss have had a system like this for around 400 years. Every citizen is trained from early teen years and have two automatic weapons and a couple of uniforms – they train regularly – in their closet until they’re 65.
h.
March 25, 2009 at 8:26 am
The attempt to ban JROTC in city schools has nothing to do with Don’t Ask Don’t Tell or anything else except the crudest anti-Americanism. The message to our kids is that serving in our military is somehow immoral. City voters rejected that notion in the last election. Let’s reinstate JROTC with full credit.
March 24, 2009 at 4:02 pm
“An army without culture is a dull-witted army, and a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy.”
— Mao Zedong