By Ryan Ostry
Bugle Reporter
@RyanOstry_BR18
rostry@buglenewspapers.com
The future innovators and naturists of America officially assembled in collaboration with the Romeoville Emergency Management Agency July 21.
More than 40 scouts from within the vicinity came to Romeoville Village Hall and learned many tricks of the trade in Boy Scouts.
Also, a variety of venerable merit badges were offered for particular skills and testing that was being offered.
“One of the badges is the emergency preparedness merit badge which is an Eagle Scout required merit badge,” Peter O’Connor said, an EMT member of the volunteer REMA force. “Another is the search and rescue which both of those have elements in them where the [Boy Scouts] have to understand and interact with people who do this everyday.”
REMA is a volunteer based agency that is responsible in assisting the Village of Romeoville with providing emergency services in the occurrence of a catastrophe.
“We are a municipal agency who operates aside the police department and fire department while being trained in CPR as well as search and rescue,” O’Connor said.
Search and Rescue Emergency Preparedness are both merit badges with specific requirements that are difficult for a scout to accomplish without the support of organizations like REMA.
The scouts had the pleasure of meeting and talking to someone who is hands on in REMA duty.
In addition, they also had the chance to be a part of the search and troop mobilization.
REMA is part of the Will County Search and Rescue team, making them the quintessential group to help the scouts with the tasks.
A variety of different challenging tasks were presented to the young scouts, however, O’Connor recognized that even know it was demanding, the kids found enjoyment out of the day and learned a lot of valuable information.
“They were all very excited and we got some very positive feedback afterwards,” O’Connor said.
Another large part of the excursion was the use and understanding of the Incident Command System, which is comparable to the control method that actual troops use in real life circumstances.
“We had a lot of different searches including a lost person search, evidence type search and then we had kids who were in command,” O’Connor said. “We rotated about every 45 minutes so each group had the opportunity to try out a new station while getting to use our radios for communication and also having to report in.”
With this being the first time ever that REMA held an event to help the scouts receive more credibility and merit badges, they foresee more events happening in the future to further gain experience and badges.
“This whole experience was very practical because we were able to teach them the skills that we were taught in search and rescue, and we got to apply it,” O’Connor said. “Everything was very tangible, not just being out of a book in a classroom so having this event being hands on really impacted the interest level and I think furthered their enjoyment and understanding of what we were trying to accomplish.”