Portable Power Boxes

The department received grant money 2 years ago and purchased LED sign boards. These signs are programmable via remote or laptop computer. They are able to store preloaded messages and have been used in information decimation to the public.

Deputy Zlotin talking with Director Polimer at Square Jam 2009, LED Signs in use.

Sign stands were fabricated using PVC pipe and concrete bases. The signs run on regular house current, 120 volts. The problem was we would like to run the signs on batteries or a quite operation and both indoors and out. It was decided that portable power boxes were to be made.

Each box has a small 12 volt battery, and a 12 volt to 120 volt inverter. These boxes were designed, a fabricated by CD members and are ready for service. They will be used in a drill next week at the Town's annual Square Jam.


Fabrication specialists Traut and Triolo spearheaded the project and they turned out great.

July 26th, 2010

This Monday continued many projects ongoing with the department. 1.5 inch hose was purchased for the new pumps. The hose was cut to length, fittings added and then tested.

Traut and Triolo making new hoses.



Our Bucket Truck is equipped with a lighting attachment for the bucket. The homemade light frame is attached to the top of the bucket, then two 1500 watt lights can be safely attached. The lights give the ability to have a adjustable instant light tower. During our July 3rd drill, issues with attaching the frame came up. The proper orientation was an issue. This was remedied Monday with proper signage and directions.

Vogenberg attaching light frame to bucket.


Polimer, Corman, Levine, testing pumps and hoses .

Picture of CD's Square Jam exercise 2009.


Monday July 19th, 2010

This Monday night was a quite evening for CD members. The night included a discussion on the upcoming deployment exercise at Square Jam on August 5th. The members discussed deploying different equipment than previous years.

Medical Liaison Vogenberg and our Plans and Training Officer Chuck Levine continued to update our storage in our staff room. This is an on going project that has included building shelving units and labeling totes with various medical and deployment equipment.

Deputy Corman and Fabricator Triolo finished our portable power boxes. These 12 volt power sources will give the department the ability to power anything that runs on 120v from a 12v battery and inverter. These were speciality made to use our portable LED signs. These signs and boxes will be explained in further posts.

Director Polimer and Field Operations Officer Polimer put our newly acquired pumps into service and in storage.

Pictures from the Past

Family Week 1989-CD's Military Truck now retired towing a water tank for portable drinking water. This water tank is still in service. Director Mike Polimer is driving and Deputy Director Mike Corman's 2 daughters are in the back.

CD's now retired pick up truck, formerly of Sharon's Water Department. The truck is towing our Hobart Generator, this generator trailer is still in service and is a great asset to the department. Deputy Director Mike Corman is at the wheel.

Sharon's Amateur Radio

On the First Monday of the month, Sharon CD members participate in the RACES 2D radio drill. This emergency amateur radio drill is run off of our own Ham repeater on Moose Hill in Sharon. This radio drill has a representative from each surrounding community call in to the radio net, and then receive "traffic" or messages that are recorded.In the event of a wide scale emergency like a Hurricane, this radio network would be used to communicate between southeastern MA communities and Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency.

Currently SCD has 3 members who are amateur radio operators. They also happen to be the appointed officials for Civil Defense, Director Mike Polimer-K1FNX, Deputy Director Mike Corman-WA1WDI, and Deputy Director Barry Zlotin-WB1FEK.

SCD is always looking for new members with amateur licences. Please contact us or stop by on a Monday night.

The net is on 146.865 on the Sharon Repeater. Tune your scanner and listen in!

The picture is of the Sharon Fire Tower. This tower holds the Sharon's Amateur Repeater and other radio repeaters for the community and region.

This link will show the cities and towns for all RACES frequencies for Southeastern MA.
http://ares.ema.arrl.org/node/400

Monday July 12th, 2010

CD has there weekly meetings at 7pm every Monday night,here we meet for 3-4 hours and work on our projects that the department is currently working on.



This Monday we needed to clean up the equipment from the July 3rd exercise. This involved draining gasoline from generators, putting away lights and extension cords and putting away any other equipment left from the exercise.

We also needed to diagnose a few issues that came up last week. Our new generator cart, generator failed. This was worked on and fixed by our resident mechanic Bill Traut. It was found that the carburetor was plugged;this was fixed, tested and put back into service.

We also had a quad light of 4- 1500 watt lights fail last week. We had only 2 out of 4 lights work. This was taken apart and found that one bulb was bad and the other came dislodged in the fixture. This was serviced by our Medical Liaison Randy Vogenberg, Fabrication Specialists Sal Triolo and Deputy Director and Procurement Officer Mike Corman.

Our final fix was looking over our tower lighting trailer and discussing easy of use and better markings on the equipment. The remedies included installing bubble levels and stop markers for the trailer stability and safety.


Our other monthly duty was checking in to our monthly RACES radio group. This will be discussed in the next post.

July 3rd Exercise Pictures

July 3rd 2010 Lighting Exercise

CD members met at 5:30pm at Sharon EOC and set up lights at important intersections and the beach front for the annual fireworks display at Memorial Park Beach.The exercise was completed with all equipment back at the garage and secured at 12:30am.


Members received training on all pieces of lighting equipment in the CD arsenal including 4 trucks, small and large generators, lighting fixtures. We had training in using our communications equipment including our town issued UHF radios with the ability for interoperability to all town departments.

Night time operations were practiced, using trucks at night, reflective personal protection equipment, vehicle strobe lights, intersection safety procedures.

We do the exercise to refresh the CD members on how many of our specialized equipment works and would be ready in case of any type of an emergency in the Town of Sharon.

We did have some failures including a new portable generator cart, the generator would not start. This will be fixed at our next meeting. Other minor things were discovered and were then discussed via our email list and suggestions were talked bout with the group.

Sharon's July 3rd Celebration

Sharon CD will be providing lighting for police details at high profile locations around Memorial Park Beach in Sharon and lighting up the beach front for guests. We have been doing this lighting exercise for over 30 years. This gives us an opportunity to use our equipment in a non emergency situation. We are able to work out any bugs in our equipment,practice using the equipment like our vehicles, generators and lights. This is also a training exercise in using our radios for communications. We will have about 10 members on the streets starting at 5:30pm and will be end around midnight.

The residents and guests of Sharon will be able to see us in action. Please ask us any questions.

The picture is of Sharon CD members setting up equipment at the July 3rd 2009 fireworks. We were setting up lights on our newly secured bucket truck from the Sharon Fire Department. This 2001 Ford Bucket Truck replaced a 1970s issue bucket truck that was taken out of service by CD members in early 2009. This truck will have a newly installed diesel generator installed by CD members in the coming months.

First Post

This is the start of the Sharon Civil Defense blog. This blog will be used to document the activities of the Town of Sharon, MA Civil Defense/Emergency Management Department. The department is an all volunteer emergency services group for the Town of Sharon, MA. We meet every Monday night at 7:30 at our EOC (Emergency Operations Center) behind the Sharon Police Station at 215 South Main Street.

We provide support to all town departments for day to day operations and emergency situations. We provide emergency lighting, power, logistics, communications. The department has 12 active members and are always looking for new members.

Please join us!