Emergency Response Team

I've just returned from our initial meeting of the volunteer emergency response team in my particular office building. Very interesting...

We have a new director in our Office of Emergency Preparedness. The immediate goal is to obtain 250 volunteers from the 13 buildings my employer occupies in the greater DC area. The volunteers would assist building security in herding people out of the building or sheltering-in-place, whichever is determined by Security. Over the next several months, I'll be given additional training on how to assist bodies in moving between floors, assisting with drills, identifying potential issues, coordinating evacuations and such.

In my particular building, we need at least another dozen volunteers to provide complete building coverage and redundancy in case response team volunteers are not available.

I've updated my contact info in the contacts database. The bright yellow vests, the walkie-talkies and other materials will be arriving next week.

This is the most interesting thing that has happened to me at the office in weeks, which probably says something about how boring my job has become. It will be interesting, look good on a resume and can't hurt on my year-end performance evaluation, all while filling a useful role.

Emergency Response Team

I've just returned from our initial meeting of the volunteer emergency response team in my particular office building. Very interesting...

We have a new director in our Office of Emergency Preparedness. The immediate goal is to obtain 250 volunteers from the 13 buildings my employer occupies in the greater DC area. The volunteers would assist building security in herding people out of the building or sheltering-in-place, whichever is determined by Security. Over the next several months, I'll be given additional training on how to assist bodies in moving between floors, assisting with drills, identifying potential issues, coordinating evacuations and such.

In my particular building, we need at least another dozen volunteers to provide complete building coverage and redundancy in case response team volunteers are not available.

I've updated my contact info in the contacts database. The bright yellow vests, the walkie-talkies and other materials will be arriving next week.

This is the most interesting thing that has happened to me at the office in weeks, which probably says something about how boring my job has become. It will be interesting, look good on a resume and can't hurt on my year-end performance evaluation, all while filling a useful role.

Bastards.

My application to replace my missing passport was submitted a while ago.

Just today, Passport Canada announced a policy change dated October 1: they've changed the rules for eligibility of guarantors.

To this point, certain professionals who knew the applicant for at least two years and were not a relative could be a guarantor; for those of us living outside the Dominion, the list of professionals was considerably shorter but not impossible.

Under the new rules, a guarantor is now allowed to be a relative and the list of professional occupations is now out the window. The difficult part for me is that the guarantor must be him/herself a holder of a Canadian passport.

There are no Canadians within a day's drive of Washington, DC who currently holds a passport and can legitimately say they've known me for two years.

There is no word at the moment about what they're going to do with passport applications already in the pipeline. If I at least had a rejection notice, I might run into someone in Seattle next week who has known me the required period of time, say, Anne Uebelacker or any of my friends in Squares Across the Border. My only alternate plan is to ship my documentation to friends or family in Canada for their signatures, ship the documents back to me in the US, then ship them all back to the Gov't of Canada for processing.

To say this sucks toxic waste is a mild understatement.

Bastards.

My application to replace my missing passport was submitted a while ago.

Just today, Passport Canada announced a policy change dated October 1: they've changed the rules for eligibility of guarantors.

To this point, certain professionals who knew the applicant for at least two years and were not a relative could be a guarantor; for those of us living outside the Dominion, the list of professionals was considerably shorter but not impossible.

Under the new rules, a guarantor is now allowed to be a relative and the list of professional occupations is now out the window. The difficult part for me is that the guarantor must be him/herself a holder of a Canadian passport.

There are no Canadians within a day's drive of Washington, DC who currently holds a passport and can legitimately say they've known me for two years.

There is no word at the moment about what they're going to do with passport applications already in the pipeline. If I at least had a rejection notice, I might run into someone in Seattle next week who has known me the required period of time, say, Anne Uebelacker or any of my friends in Squares Across the Border. My only alternate plan is to ship my documentation to friends or family in Canada for their signatures, ship the documents back to me in the US, then ship them all back to the Gov't of Canada for processing.

To say this sucks toxic waste is a mild understatement.