8 JAX AIR NEWS, NAS JACKSONVILLE, Thursday, June 18, 2009 Team prepares for hurricane response By Sue Brink Life Safety Evaluation, Safety and NAVFAC Southeast Public Affairs Officer Operational Risk Management e Naval Facilities En- in Contingency Environment, rP | ... Fc. ,, HAZMAT Awareness, and CPR/ lg neer ng iomma (NAVFAC) Southeast Con- tingency Engineering Response Team (CERT) held a three-day training session on board NAS Jacksonville May 27-29 to pre- pare for the 2009 Hurricane Season. "Our NAVFAC Southeast Areas of Responsibility encompass approximately 80 percent of the probable 'strike zone' for landfall in the Continental U.S. by a hur- ricane, tropical storm or tropical depression," says Don Maconi, NAVFAC Southeast Contingency Response Engineer/Disaster Coordinator. The rain-heavy nor'easter that hammered Northeast Florida the week of May 18 served as a vivid reminder of the need to be pre- pared. CERT members receive first- class instruction in Post-Disaster Facility Damage Assessment and First Aid. NAVFAC CERTs are one of the key tools in disaster recovery, consisting of one or more disaster assessment teams, in addition to personnel who enable installa- tion recovery efforts. The teams consist of NAVFAC volunteers such as active duty civil engineer corps officers, and civilian engi- neers, architects, project manag- ers, facilities managers, contract specialists and over 70 NAVFAC Southeast Patriot volunteers. NAVFAC Southeast will be first on the ground after a storm to ensure the required assessments are made to get the installation back to normal. The sooner shore infrastructure is turned back over to the installation, the sooner Sailors, Navy civilians and their families will be ready to fulfill the Navy's operation and combat readiness mission. NAVFAC Southeast Contingency Emergency Response Team (CERT) training May 27 for the 2009 hurricane season included instruction in CPR and first aid. Photo by Annalisa Cachin Seatbelts: What's so hard to figure out? By April Phillips Naval Safety Center Public Affairs Seatbelts are a no-brainer. They save lives, they're easy to use, and they're required in 49 states. New Hampshire should amend its state motto from "Live Free or Die" to "Live Free and Die in a Car Crash. While that state doesn't have a seat belt law for adults, it does require children under 18 to buckle up. There aren't a lot of Sailors and Marines sta- tioned in New Hampshire, but if they happen to be traveling through the state, they're still required to wear a seat belt because Navy and Marine Corps regulations require it. Most people don't need a law or the UCMJ to tell them to buckle up. For many, it's second nature, and they wouldn't dream of riding in a car - or allowing anyone else to ride with them without fastening a seatbelt. There's no gray area in the statis- tics, as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) shows in their 2008 study. NHTSA found that 90 percent of drivers and occupants now use seatbelts. That's an all-time high. Tellingly, as the seatbelt usage rates have gone up, the vehicle occu- pant fatalities per mile traveled have steadily declined. People who are thrown completely out of a vehicle in a car crash have a 75 percent chance of being killed. NHTSA estimates that in 2006, 15,383 lives were saved by seatbelts. So why do some people still refuse to wear them? Are those who drive unrestrained hard-headed, reck- 7 i1r less, or just plain stupid? Sometimes, they're wasted drunk, and having too much to drink increases the odds that a driver will neglect to wear a seat- belt. An example of this is a service member who'd had way too many. He combined alcohol and speed and he wasn't wearing his seatbelt. The pas- senger, however, was wearing his. The drunk driver took a 30-mile- per-hour curve at 70 and didn't make it. His vehicle flipped several times, he was ejected from the car, and pro- nounced dead at the scene. The pas- senger who was buckled up made it out alive. Summer is a time when many Sailors and Marines are behind the wheel of a car or truck, driving to vacation destinations. You never know when the unex- pected might occur. Wear seatbelts because they make sense, are the law, and are the rule for all military mem- bers. And make your family members wear them because you love them. Other useful resources and links: NHTSA: www-nrd.nhtsa. dot. gov/pdf/nrd- 3 0/NCSA/ RNotes/2005/809932.pdf NHTSA Final Stats: www-nrd. nhtsa. dot. gov/pdf/nrd- 30/NCSA/ TSFAnn/TSF2004.pdf Safe Communities: www.safecom- munities.org/sitemap.php National Center for Injury Prevention and Control : www.cdc. gov/ncipc/duip/buckleup.htm Photo byAWVAN Scott Beach MASN Marcus Locklear grabs two cones during the traffic lane shift on Yorktown Avenue. Beginning June 29, the use of traffic cones will be discontinued and drivers must follow lane control lights. TRAFFIC: attention From Page 1 a green light/arrow at the earliest opportunity. Anytime a power surge hits the system, or if a conflict is detected in the system, the controller is programmed to go into fail safe mode. This means the lane control lights will show red "X's" for both of the middle lanes. The system will eventually cycle through and return back to the correct pattern. You may also notice from time to time that one set of lane control lights may have the center two lanes completely blank. That is due to a fault that controls just that one set of lights. The fail safe mode again comes into play and the middle two lane control lights will just go off. Again, on the next cycle, the lights will normally reset and work properly. Bottom Line: The three things you always need to remember are: (1) When traffic cones and lane signals are both present, traffic cones take precedence over lane con- trol lights. (2) After the cones are removed, check the lane control lights when you enter Yorktown Avenue to see what the pattern is and get in a lane with a green arrow (light). (3) Always check behind you if you are going to turn left on Yorktown to ensure that no one is coming up the lane to the left of you. After an evaluation period, a final decision will be made as to whether to permanently remove the cones, or if in fact they are still needed. 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