Category Archives: Safety

MCAP

Posted on March 26, 2013 | Comments Off on MCAP

Medfield Cares About Prevention (MCAP)’s grant application to the Federal government seeking $625,000 funding over five years has been submitted for the second straight year.  Dawn Alcott, Director of Medfield Youth Outreach, and Dr. Susan Andersen-Navalta of McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School, a Medfield resident, took the lead to prepare the grant application again this year.

MCAP is a coalition formed to eliminate substance abuse amongst young people in Medfield.  MCAP has been holding monthly meetings for almost two years.

Needham and Natick have both already received the grants.  Medfield resident Carol Read is the grant funded staff person in the Needham program, and have been hugely helpful to MCAP by sharing how the Needham effort has progressed and what they have done that has been successful.

Comments Off on MCAP

Posted in Safety, Teens

Friday Blizzard

Posted on February 7, 2013 | Comments Off on Friday Blizzard

I just finished a conference call arranged by MEMA for municipal officials with the National Weather Service.  The NWS is reporting that there will be a substantial blizzard with 18″ – 24″ of snow expected, starting with light snow Friday morning, with the heavier snow coming Friday afternoon, and the high winds starting in the evening.

They expect at least three hours of blizzard conditions with snow coming down at 2 – 4″ of snow per hour.

They expect high winds from 8 PM Friday to 10 AM Saturday, which will cause wide spread power outages.  Line repairs cannot be started until the winds subside, as bucket trucks cannot operate in high winds.

There could even be thunderstorms, which can cause 5″ – 6″ of snow per hour in spots.

Some computer models see up to 3″ of liquid from this storm, which could result in even more amounts of snow, as the relationship of water to snow is generally about 10 – 1, depending upon the density and wetness of the snow.

Comments Off on Friday Blizzard

Posted in Information, Safety

Dealing with children about trauma

Posted on December 18, 2012 | Comments Off on Dealing with children about trauma

Good advice in two articles from our local community mental health agency and my former entity, Riverside Community Care, as circulated this morning by Blake Middle School –

==============================

Riverside Trauma Center 255 Highland Avenue, Needham, MA 02494 (Tel) 781-433-0672
24 hour trauma response line: 888-851-2451 (this is not a suicide prevention hotline)
http://www.riversidetraumacenter.org
Rev: 3/11
Riverside Trauma Center

CHILDREN AND TRAUMA

Children respond to traumatic violence in a variety of ways; however there are several typical responses. These responses vary, depending on numerous factors, some of which are: the child‟s age, whether the child knew the individuals involved, and how „graphic‟ the violence was.  Some common responses to trauma include:
 Concerns about fearing that the person (people) suffered
 Repeatedly visualizing the crime/incident in their minds
 Constant attempts to tell and retell the story of the crime/incident
 Need to reenact the crime/incident through play
 A desire to seek revenge (for those who knew the victim(s))
 Feelings of guilt for not having intervened or prevented the crime

For some children, particularly those who knew the victim(s), signals of grief after a violent crime/incident include:
 Fear of death
 Fear of being left alone or sleeping alone
 A need to be with people who have been through the same experience
 Difficulty concentrating
 Drop in grades (during the school year)
 Physical complaints (headaches/stomachaches)
 Bed-wetting
 Nightmares
 Fear of sleep
 Clingy behavior (wanting to be with and around parents more often)

What you can do to help children who have witnessed violence:
 Allow your child to talk about what he/she experienced or heard about
 Know that younger children may prefer to “draw” about their experiences
 Ask them what they saw and heard and what they think about the experience. Help them to label feelings, and normalize their reactions (“that must have been pretty scary. It wouldn‟t surprise me if you keep thinking about it.”)
 Spend some extra time with your child: have dinner together, make sure to keep bedtime routines.
 Remind your child of things he/she likes to do to help feel better when upset (playing, reading, etc.).
 Keep routines as much the same as possible in the aftermath of an unpleasant event. Children count on routines and structure.

If you have concerns that your child may be having serious responses to trauma, you should speak to a counselor.

RIVERSIDE TRAUMA CENTER
http://www.riversidetraumacenter.org
24 hour Critical Incident Line: 888-851-2451

=================================

RIVERSIDE TRAUMA CENTER

Talking with your Children About Traumatic Events

Here are some tips for talking with your children when they have witnessed or heard about traumatic events:

Listen to your children: Ask what have they heard about the traumatic event. What do they think happened? Let them tell you in their own words and answer their questions. Don’t assume you know what they are feeling or what their questions will be. The easiest way to have this conversation might be while they are engaged in an activity: drawing, sitting on a swing, or driving with you in the car. Details that may be obvious to adults may not be to children. For example a child may see a school shooting on television and assume it happened in his or her neighborhood not hundreds of miles away. Be truthful but don’t tell them more information than they can handle for their age.

Focus on their safety: Once you understand their perception of the traumatic event, be clear that you will keep them safe and let them know adults (school, police, etc.) are working hard to make sure they will stay safe. School age children may be assured to know the shooter or persons responsible for this tragedy are dead or have been arrested and do not present a danger to your child or his or her school.

Pay attention to your reactions: Your children will be watching you carefully and taking their cues from you. If you can manage your anxiety about the traumatic event your children will be more easily reassured.

Monitor your child’s access to media: It will help if young children do not watch news reports or see the front page of the newspaper. Young children who watch a traumatic event on the TV news may think the event is still ongoing or happening again.

Watch for behavior changes: Your children may show you through their behavior they are still struggling with what they have heard or seen. They may have physical complaints or regressive behaviors often including nightmares, insomnia or bed wetting. They may feel guilty that they are responsible for the event, and need to be reassured that they are not responsible.

Maintain your routines: Sticking to your daily structure of activities: mealtimes, bedtime rituals, etc. reduces anxiety and helps children feel more in control.

Keep the door open: Encourage your children to come to you with any questions or concerns and do not assume the questions will stop after a few days or even a few weeks. Let them know their fears and questions are normal and you will always make time for them.  Remind them all questions are welcome.

Consider this a teachable moment: For older children this traumatic event may lead to a discussion about ways they can help others who have experienced a tragedy. You can also ask them if they know how to keep themselves safe when they are away from home. Traumatic events make us feel like we have lost control so any constructive activities we engage in make us feel less vulnerable.

Comments Off on Dealing with children about trauma

Posted in Children, Safety

North Street water main status

Posted on December 17, 2012 | 3 comments

Mike tells me that the rains caused a pothole to form in a recently dug up area along North Street where the water main has just been replaced.  Water filling the pothole to the top, such that drivers could not see the hole.  Unfortunately, a number of cars got flats and/or damaged hitting the hole.  Fortunately for the town, the liability rests with the contractor.

The work is mostly finished now, with just a few house connections left and sidewalk clean up remaining..  I asked Mike if the roadway would be smoothed out so the town does not have to live with it in such poor shape for the whole winter, and he reported that yes it would be.  They need to let is settle and compact for a year before they do the final resurfacing.

3 Comments

Posted in Downtown, Safety, Town Services, Water & Sewer

Parents more influential than schools on substance abuse

Posted on December 10, 2012 | Comments Off on Parents more influential than schools on substance abuse

This from the Medfield Youth Outreach office –

A new study concludes that parental involvement is more important than the school environment in preventing or limiting children’s use of alcohol or marijuana.

Researchers evaluated data from more than 10,000 students, parents, teachers and school administrators. They looked at “family social capital”—bonds between parents and children—as well as “school social capital”—a school’s ability to provide a positive environment for learning, Science Daily<http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121204145553.htm> reports.

Measures of family social capital include trust, open communication and active engagement in a child’s life, while school social capital includes student involvement in extracurricular activities, teacher morale and the teachers’ ability to address student needs.

“Parents play an important role in shaping the decisions their children make when it comes to alcohol and marijuana,” study co-author Dr. Toby Parcel of North Carolina State University said in a news release<http://news.ncsu.edu/releases/wms-parcel-alcohol/>. “To be clear, school programs that address alcohol and marijuana use are definitely valuable, but the bonds parents form with their children are more important. Ideally, we can have both.”

The researchers found students with high levels of family social capital and low school social capital levels were less likely to have used either marijuana or alcohol, or to have used them less frequently, compared with students with high levels of school social capital and low family social capital.

The study appears in Journal of Drug Issues<http://jod.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/11/08/0022042612462220>.

Medfield Youth Outreach
459 Main St.
Medfield, MA 02052
508-359-7121

Comments Off on Parents more influential than schools on substance abuse

Posted in MCAP - Medfeild Cares About Prevention, Safety, Schools, Teens

Town’s Sandy planning underway

Posted on October 26, 2012 | Comments Off on Town’s Sandy planning underway

Email yesterday afternoon from Mike Sullivan –

FYI, Will forward additional information as received. Meeting tomorrow with Chiefs, Ken and Bob Maguire at 12;30 p.m. to get latest update from Taunton NOAA meteorologist and to plan for storm. Started cleaning culverts and lowering boards on dams today and getting equipment ready for use. Talked to NSTAR and they are bringing in additional crews for power restoration and clean-up. Mike

From: “Mannion, James A (CDA)”
Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2012 4:53 PM
Subject: Situational Awareness Statement #4

Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency

Hurricane Sandy Situational Awareness Statement (SAS) #4

Date:  October 25, 2012

Time:  4:30 PM

Situation:

Hurricane Sandy, currently a Category 2 hurricane, is located in the Bahamas and is projected to move northward off the eastern Florida coast tomorrow into Saturday. It remains too early to determine Sandy’s precise track for early next week, but the probability of Sandy going out to sea is now very low. Current computer models are showing an increasing degree of confidence that Sandy will impact northeastern United States as a strong tropical storm, with a current projected landfall between Monday night and Tuesday morning. It is important to note that Massachusetts is still well within the margin of error for the predicted track.

 

National Weather Service now has a high degree of confidence that New England will experience significant impacts from Sandy regardless of the location of the landfall.  With landfall south of New England, Massachusetts is still likely to sustain significant impacts from this storm including damaging winds, associated power outages, and freshwater and coastal flooding.

 

A landfall in New England will bring a 3 to 5 foot storm surge to south- and east-facing coasts of Massachusetts. These storm surge totals are in additional to normal tide levels (although we are not expected to see astronomically high tides during this event). A landfall in New England will bring even greater impacts to the region, with Massachusetts potentially experiencing a historic degree of freshwater and coastal flooding, wind damage, and associated power outages.

 

Potential impacts of Sandy include:

 

High Seas: Sandy is predicted to cause unusually high seas (25 feet or greater) off the coast of New England beginning Sunday and peaking Monday and Tuesday. Seas will be dangerous and potentially life-threatening, even for large vessels.  Winds are expected to be at least gale to storm force occasional hurricane force gusts.

 

Winds: Damaging winds and associated widespread power outages lasting as long as a week are likely if Sandy makes landfall across Massachusetts. Wind damage will be exacerbated in southern New England as most trees still have foliage at this time of year. If Sandy makes landfall in or tracks near southern New England, isolated wind gusts of up to Category 2 hurricane strength (96-110mph) are possible.

 

Coastal Flooding: Both east- and south-facing coasts in southern New England have a high risk of minor to moderate coastal flooding beginning Sunday afternoon and lasting through Tuesday.  Moderate to major coastal flooding (up to 3 to 5 feet of storm surge) and significant beach erosion is possible if Sandy makes landfall in southern New England.

 

Rain/Flooding: While it is still too soon to determine where the heaviest rain focus will be, confidence is rising that southern New England will see potentially flooding rainfall from Sandy.  In a worst-case scenario, southern New England could receive as much as 7.5 to 8.5 inches of sustained rainfall, with pockets of 8.5+ inches.

 

The latest 5-day forecast map from the National Hurricane Center is included below.

 

State Actions:

MEMA is actively monitoring the storm and initiating preparedness activities. This afternoon, MEMA held a coordination meeting with state agencies. Tomorrow, MEMA will start holding daily coordination calls with local public safety officials and conducting pre-incident planning with select Emergency Support Functions.  MEMA will continue to monitor Sandy’s progress and issue additional SASs at least daily until the threat to New England has passed.

 

MEMA’s Activation Status: MEMA is currently at Level IV (Steady State).

 

Information for Local Officials:

MEMA encourages local officials to monitor Sandy’s progress and predicted track closely and undertake preparedness activities such as:

 

  • Reviewing emergency plans and procedures
  • Assessing areas that may be subject to flooding and developing plans for communicating with, and potentially evacuating people in these areas
  • Updating emergency contact lists
  • Testing communications and warning systems
  • Reviewing emergency contracts and available resource inventories
  • Testing generators and ensuring emergency fuel supplies for them
  • Assessing local emergency shelter readiness and capacity.

 

MEMA also strongly urges local officials to review their Sea, Lake, and Overland Surge from Hurricanes (SLOSH) inundation maps to pre-identify areas particularly at risk from storm surge flooding.  SLOSH maps and other hurricane preparedness resources can be found on MEMA’s website at http://www.mass.gov/eopss/home-sec-emerg-resp/plan-prep/natural-hazards/hurricanes/.  Please note that you will need to have Google Earth installed on your computer to access the online SLOSH maps that are available through MEMA’s website.

 

Hurricane Preparedness Tips for the General Public:

  • Stay informed by monitoring the storm via the media.
  • Be sure to have a well-stocked Family Disaster Kit in the event you lose power or are isolated for a number of days.
  • Clear clogged rain gutters. This storm brings the potential for torrential rain. Providing clear drainage will help prevent misdirected flooding.
  • Secure outdoor items such as lawn furniture, trash barrels, hanging plants, toys and awnings that can be broken or picked up by strong winds and potentially become a projectile.
  • Elevate articles in your basement that could be damaged from even minor flooding.
  • Keep your vehicles fully fuelled.
  • Have a certain amount of cash available.  If power is lost, ATMs may not be working.

 

Ping4alerts!:

MEMA encourages smartphone users to download the free ping4alerts! app. This app is available free of charge for iPhone and Android phones and receives severe weather alerts from the National Weather Service and emergency information from MEMA based on the user’s location.  Learn more at http://www.mass.gov/mema/mobileapp.

 

Online Resources:

For additional information and resources, visit:

Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency at www.mass.gov/mema (Hurricane preparedness tips and other preparedness information are available through the “Hurricane” link on MEMA’s homepage).

MEMA’s Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/MassachusettsEMA

MEMA Twitter: @MassEMA

Federal Emergency Management Agency at www.fema.gov

National Hurricane Center website at www.nhc.noaa.gov

National Weather Service/Taunton at www.weather.gov/boston

National Weather Service/Albany, NY at www.weather.gov/albany

Mass211 at www.mass211.org

 

Comments Off on Town’s Sandy planning underway

Posted in Planning, Safety, Town Services

Keep older tires on front wheels

Posted on July 31, 2012 | Comments Off on Keep older tires on front wheels

This is from a service that supplies expert witnesses to attorneys for trials, and it runs counter to what I had thought –

TIRE REPLACEMENT
NEW TIRES ON THE FRONT OR BACK?
Introduction Tire maintenance is an important part of vehicle safety, everything a vehicle does: go, stop, and turn, is directed to the roadway through the tire footprints. In an ideal world, all tires would be rotated often, about every 5,000 miles, and all tires would wear evenly and wear out together. Then a new set of 4 tires would be purchased and installed. The cycle repeats.

QUESTION: In the real world it is common for a vehicle to need only two tires replaced at a given time; in this situation, where should the new tires be installed?

SHORT ANSWER: Newer tires should always be be installed on the rear of a vehicle.

Long Answer In the event of a loss in control, the vehicle does not go in the manner or direction the driver intends. In some cases, the front tires lose traction. In this event, the vehicle understeers, it turns less than the driver intends. Sometimes this results in the vehicle traveling to the outside of a curve and sometimes even going off the pavement. In an understeer, the natural reaction of the driver is to lift off the gas and turn a little sharper. Both of these reactions will often bring the vehicle back under control.

Sometimes, the rear tires lose traction. In that event, the rear end swings out causing the vehicle to yaw. This action often occurs very fast and requires quick and precise countersteering by the driver to correct. Unfortunately this condition is outside the experience of most drivers and rarely can an oversteer be corrected. This often results in a crash.

Therefore, it is always preferable to have a vehicle lose traction at the front than to lose traction at the rear. This is how all vehicles are designed. They all have some built-in understeer.

If the front tires and rear tires are different in age, or tread depth, it is important that the better tires always be mounted on the rear wheel positions. This will maintain a safe handling condition of the vehicle. This seems counterintuitive because sometimes it seems that the better tires should be installed on the harder working front wheel positions, but that can result in an unsafe oversteering condition.

Another reason to install new tires on the rear is that new tires have a smaller chance of failing than older tires. Just as the rear tires need to have better traction to maintain a controllable vehicle, a vehicle with a rear tire failure is much harder to control than a vehicle with a front tire failure.

Therefore, it is always necessary to ensure that the better tires on a vehicle are mounted on the rear wheel positions. This applies to any 4 tire vehicle. One-ton and heavier trucks that have dual rear tires have more to consider.

Comments Off on Keep older tires on front wheels

Posted in Safety

MCAP grant proposal

Posted on March 1, 2012 | Comments Off on MCAP grant proposal

This morning I attended a long Medfield Care About Prevention (MCAP) meeting at Medfield High School at which Dawn Alcott, the director of the Medfield Youth Outreach office, and her team presented their plan to apply for a five year $625,000 ($125,000 a year for five years) federal grant to address substance abuse in Medfield.  The goal would be to change the community culture.

The availability of the grant monies was a recent surprise happening, and as a result the team is scrambling to get the grant application submitted within the next three weeks.  This morning the team filled the twelve required slots on the coalition mandated by the grant.  I was asked to be the representative from a “local … agency with expertise in the field of substance abuse,”  based upon my being a Medfield selectman with a twenty year history as a member of the Riverside Community Care board, including five as its president.  During my tenure with Riverside Community Care, Riverside grew from about a $36,000 per year vendor to the state using borrow state staff into a $30 m. per year community mental health center.  In the fifteen years since I left its board, Riverside has doubled in size.

Comments Off on MCAP grant proposal

Posted in Safety, Schools, Teens, Town Services

Memo says it costs extra to store vehicles outdoors

Posted on February 21, 2012 | 1 comment

Medfield Building and Planning Committee chair,Tom Erb, has circulated a memo prepared by Weston & Sampson, which states that the additional cost to store 30 DPW vehicles outdoors for their lifetime is $4 m.  More importantly, employee safety is also noted to be worse when vehicles are stored outside.

See the full memo at https://medfield02052.blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/20120221-ws-techmemovehiclestorage-1.pdf

1 Comment

Posted in Buildings, Safety

Teen alcohol use

Posted on January 11, 2012 | 1 comment

I wrote this as a comment to an article on Medfield.Patch.com this morning, and Patch told me it was way too long (“Easy there, Tolstoy. Your comment cannot exceed 1500 characters.”), so I have posted it here instead.

What I took away from the MCAP meeting last November, and from prior similar ones, was both the high incidence of binge drinking amongst the juniors and seniors at Medfield High School, but even more importantly, the research that clearly documents a direct correlation between the onset age at which alcohol use begins and the eventual rate of alcohol related problems later in life.  It is apparently both well researched and well documented that the earlier in one’s life that one starts to use alcohol, the more likely it is that one will have alcohol addiction problems later in life.   So every year we can get our kids to postpone alcohol use makes later addiction problems that much less likely for them.

Given that there is such a well documented cause and effect relationship between the earlier onset age of drinking and later increased alcohol related problems, and given too that those adverse results can be avoided by the current choices being made by our youth, it strikes me that we as a society should be doing whatever we can to assist our youth to:

  1. first, fully understand and appreciate the increased risk and the potential long term consequences of their present choices and actions surrounding drinking, and
  2. second, learn the strategies and gain the confidence to avoid current choices that have potential to start severe long term effects for such a significant number of them.

It was at a prior similar meeting that the speaker noted that they now know that the brain is not fully developed until we are about twenty-five years of age.  As a result, the effects of alcohol use by those younger brains differs from its effect on the fully developed brain.  One of those differences seems to be the greater susceptibility to addiction.  If we so clearly know both that fact and those risks, how can we as a society not try to influence our youth away from  behaviors that will cause then long term problems and greater grief.

I do not claim to know the answer as to how this gets done, but I do know that it is not enough to just say that we all drank when we were young, that the kids now will all continue to do it too, and as a result to do nothing.  There is just too much to lose to not try to make more of a difference.  I also know that society has been able to successfully change attitudes and behavior towards both smoking and seatbelt use during my lifetime, primarily by the education of our youth on the associated risks and consequences.  Now it is our children who chose not to smoke and chose to wear seatbelts, and in turn teach and shame we parents into following suit.  As a society, we cannot afford to risk the loss of one more of our youth to alcohol, so we must do something.

I posted at my blog, https://medfield02052.wordpress.com/,  the materials from that MCAP meeting last November, which can be found at https://medfield02052.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1158&action=edit&message=6&postpost=v2.

1 Comment

Posted in Children, Safety, Teens