05/10/2013
Update: May 10th 2013
Make Mom proud!
Join your neighbors and friends to help out at Arbor Lodge Park/Harper's Playground tomorrow, that's this Saturday, May 11th between 9-12. We will have fun, you'll meet some new neighbors, and the Park and Playground will shine for Mother's Day.
Keeping our ParkPlayground pesticide/herbicide free is really important with all the kids, dogs, and other humans who play and relax here during this sunny Oregon spring. Thanks to all.
05/04/2013
Update: May 4th 2013
Arbor Lodge Park/Harper's Playground Work PartySaturday, May 11th 9-12Next Saturday, May 11th, between 9-12 we will work to maintain our pesticide/herbicide free status in the Playground and Park. Come join us for some FUN!We will have guests from the LDS Church, hopefully also from the Timber's Army, and some UP students all coming to help support the Playground and Park. We need neighbors too.
Projects will include:* general trash pickup (we have fun trash picker uppers)* weeding around trees, then spreading bark mulch* weeding around light posts and in the ground signs, ditto bark mulch* edging the entire east side along the gravel parking strip (this will be heavy digging and hauling in wheel barrows) fyi, the Parks Dept will dig out the parking area/put down landscape cloth/cover it all with new gravel - date not known, but soon. Our edging will complete the project and really spruce that side of the Park up!* painting the metal pipe along the east side (weather permitting)* detailed weeding in both Baseball diamonds, dugouts, back stops, along the foul line, etc. (no games are set until 1pm that day)* flame weeding all along Bryant and Dekum and in sidewalks (training required to flame weed/must be over 18/must wear closed toed shoes)* detail weeding in the tennis courts to keep weeds out of the cracks (think fine motor exercise)
We have tools and some gloves. We'll provide coffee and water and snacks too.Please come help the Playground and Park you enjoy so much continue to thrive as a pesticide/herbicide free zone. Questions? ginger.edws@gmail.com Thanks!
05/04/2013
NET Training - Triaging the big three and putting splints on things
Basic disaster medicine was the name of the game for weeks 3 and 4 of NET training, the gist of those lessons being this: in a major disaster, medical help might take a long time to arrive, so NETs may have to hold the fort until they do.
To get an idea of the resource limits, consider the Portland Fire Bureau. The bureau employs 700 firefighters, but only 125 of those are on duty at a time. In a disaster, it will take a while for off-duty responders to get to work. And when they do, they will have to do the greatest good for the greatest numbers, which may mean that people in neighborhood have to sit tight.
Meanwhile, NETs are expected to play a role in limiting deaths from trauma. We're sure not doctors. But we spent week 3 learning to treat life-threatening conditions like airway obstruction, shock, and heavy bleeding.
Knowing who has such injuries is half the battle, so we imagined a scenario in which we'd have to find out fast. Breaking up into groups and feigning ailments, we learned to triage a large group fast - calling out the walking wounded, then spending roughly 30 seconds per person looking for signs of the big three greatest health risks: shock, heavy bleeding and blocked airways. We learned to tag each person based on their medical needs, then organized them in a triage area where medical responders can get to then quickly as they arrive. We also learned to treat each of the big three.
Airway blockage is easy enough. As any sleep apnea sufferer can tell you, a person who isn't breathing, typically on their back, simply needs to get breathing again. It's a thing a little body positioning can resolve if the main problem is the tongue sliding over the airway. We learned some head-tilting techniques to correct it, and practiced moving each other's heads around.
Bleeding is a trickier business. How serious it is it depends on where the blood is coming from - capillaries, veins or arteries. Our aim is to control wounds with a bandage, pressure, and elevation. If those measures don't work in 7 minutes, or a limb is damaged beyond repair, tourniquets are a last resort. We practiced bandaging wounds, pressing pressure points, and elevating and covering one another.
Shock seems difficult to spot - especially in a person you don't know - but the signs are rapid and shallow breathing, the inability to follow basic commands like "squeeze my hand," and poor capillary refill. Translation: squeeze the fingernail beds or any other part of the body. If they don't turn pink in 2 seconds, that's shock. People suffering from shock are having trouble moving blood around their body. They should be laid down with their legs up and kept warm with covers. People with blocked airways and bleeding wounds should be checked for shock.
Week 4 was a week for more minor issues: we learned some logistics for setting up our triage areas, and to conduct head-to-toe assessment of victims after triage. We also learned to treat a long list of things that nobody wants, but just might have in an emergency: wounds, burns, sprains, dislocations, fractures, nosebleeds, bites, heat-related injuries and hypothermia.
04/30/2013
NET Training - Fires and hazmat symbols
Weeks 2 flew by in NET Training, where we intrepid neighborhood volunteers prepared to assist in the event of a giant earthquake, flood, or other such calamity.
Our second week focused mostly on fire suppression. Fires can be common following an earthquake, and NET volunteers, charged with assisting until emergency responders arrive, need a very modest amount of fire-fighting know-how so we can stamp out little fires before they become big ones.
This video won't teach you anything about putting fires out, but it might make you feel differently about your Christmas tree. It was intended to give us NETs a clue about how quickly a fire gets out of control. In a word: fast.
Stamping out fire, even a little fire, is harder than it sounds. Turns out there are at least four kinds if fire extinguishers: water, dry chemical, foam, and carbon dioxide.
We learned water fire extinguishers are good for dousing your average burning solid, like, say when your brother lights a fire in a garbage can full of leaves. You can use foam or dry chemicals on those too. Foam, CO2 and foam-dry chemical extinguishers can put out a fire in a flammable liquid, for instance in the pan of vegetable oil that has been known to ignite while I am cooking. (This part of the lesson made it clear why that grease fire went so poorly back in Mom's kitchen some decades ago, after I sprayed it with the faucet hose. Good thing Mom came home in the middle of that doughnut experiment!) There are also chemical extinguishers for commercial kitchens, and CO2 and dry chemical extinguishers for electrical fires. Apparently there are special extinguishers for metals too, some of which are combustible. Who knew!
A few other things we learned NETs might do in a fire: help keep them from spreading by shutting off gas valves and electrical panels. If water lines break, or if water is contaminated, this lesson also taught us how to shut off the water. And if the bluff ever goes up again, and the fire department is able to respond faster than to a big earthquake or similar fuss, we might just be called upon to direct traffic and help people get out of the way.
Week two also schooled us in how to read those funky symbols on the sides of tractor trailers or the doors of places where people go to work in rubber. In most of those cases, we're supposed to just run the other way. NETs aren't advised to get themselves into more trouble than they can contain. And for that reason, we also talked about the buddy system, which keeps us safe AND keeps us from doing anything ill-conceived.
04/28/2013
Update: April 28th 2013
$624!That's the amount of money earned with the volunteers, donators, contributors, etc. to the Arbor Lodge/Kenton Clean Up yesterday. And that is just our share.
Many thanks to all who volunteered, who brought items and donated, who spread the word via distributing fliers or just telling a neighbor. This money will help us fund the Movie in the Park on July 27th, and more.
You all rock! Together we make Arbor Lodge great. : )