Local Fire Safety Project a Success
It started with a newspaper article about Nogales Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) joining with the American Red Cross (ARC) to install smoke alarms in residents’ homes. The Patagonia CERT decided to do the same in Patagonia. Patagonia CERT and Red Cross teams installed 111 smoke alarms in 62 homes in Patagonia.
When we contacted the ARC we found them eager to supply the alarms, come to Patagonia, provide installation and fire prevention training, and team with CERT volunteers to install the alarms.
The ten members of CERT signed up residents and made reminder calls a week before the event. Only a handful of Patagonia residents had to cancel, and we filled their spots from a waiting list. There were 64 households on our final list, and of those only two were not home when we arrived.
We also provided breakfast and lunch, a headquarters, some of the vehicles, and the local logistics of installation routes and maps. Town Manager Ron Robinson and his wife, Debbie, joined our installation teams as volunteers.
We could never have succeeded without ARC. They supplied the alarms, all the equipment to install the alarms (from screws to stepladders), and educational material to encourage people to create fire escape plans and reduce fire hazards in their homes.
Even more impressive were the 11 ARC volunteers and two ARC employees who gave up their Saturday to help install the alarms. They came from Tucson, Sierra Vista, Hereford and Green Valley, so they had to wake up quite early to be in Patagonia by the 8:30 start time.
We formed seven installation teams with Red Cross and CERT members or Patagonia volunteers on each team. The two supply teams and the headquarters staff were also mixed teams. We worked together well.
I’m proud of the work of our CERT volunteers, thrilled at the generosity of the Red Cross volunteers, and just plain happy with what we succeeded in doing.
Marilyn Miller
Patagonia
Who Made That Mural?
I am a big admirer of your local newspaper, and enjoy every edition. A correction to last month’s article concerning the mural painted on the end of the block. It was not a student work, but the work of a talented local artist who had family here, and perhaps still does. Daniel Randolph is the artist who conceived the project and did most of the work. He had a small studio in the building, maybe where the Gathering Grounds is now. He perhaps had helpers such as Rhonda Brew. It was first painted at least 25 years ago; over time it became faded. A few years ago, my husband decided it was worth keeping. He contacted the owner for permission, and commissioned Rhonda to touch it up.
Phyllis Klosterman
Patagonia
Errors and Omissions
In the article about the changes coming to downtown Patagonia in the January PRT we incorrectly referred to Family Health Care Amigos as a home health agency. It should have been identified as a charity providing durable medical equipment, adult incontinent supplies and assistance with advance directives. The organization was created in 1975 by people in the community wanting to support the Carolyn Montoya Medical Clinic. Linda Huffstetler-Dearing, president of the board, did not move to Patagonia until 2012.
Also in that same article, Anne Anderson’s name was incorrectly spelled. She and her husband, Andy, are the owners of Creative Spirits Gallery, not the managers, as we incorrectly stated in the article.
Our apologies for these errors.