C.E.R.T.
About Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) Training
If available, emergency services personnel are the best trained and equipped to handle emergencies, and you should use them. However, following a catastrophic disaster, you and the community may be on your own for a period of time because of the size of the area affected, lost communications, and un-passable roads.
CERT training is designed to prepare you to help yourself, your family, and your neighbors in the event of a catastrophic disaster. Because emergency services personnel will not be able to help everyone immediately, you can make a difference by using the training to save lives and protect property.
This training covers basic skills that are important to know in a disaster when emergency services are not available. With training and practice and by working as a team, you will be able to do the greatest good for the greatest number of victims after a disaster, while protecting yourself from becoming a victim.
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When Disaster Strikes:
The damage caused by natural disasters and man-made events such as earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, and terrorism can affect all elements of society and government. These events:
Severely restrict or overwhelm our response resources, communications, transportation, and utilities.
Leave many individuals and neighborhoods cut off from outside support.
It takes time for emergency response agencies to set up and prepare for an organized response, and damaged roads and disrupted communications systems may restrict their access into critically affected areas. Thus, for the initial period immediately following a disaster-often up to 3 days or longer-individuals, households, and neighborhoods may need to rely on their own resources for:
Food Water First aid Shelter
Individual preparedness, planning, survival skills, and mutual aid within neighborhoods and worksites during this initial period are essential measures in coping with the aftermath of a disaster.
Community Preparedness:
Community-based preparedness planning allows us to prepare for and respond to anticipated disruptions and potential hazards following a disaster. As individuals, we can prepare our homes and families to cope during that critical period. Through pre-event planning, neighborhoods and worksites can also work together to help reduce injuries, loss of lives, and property damage. Neighborhood preparedness will enhance the ability of individuals and neighborhoods to reduce their emergency needs and to manage their existing resources until professional assistance becomes available.
Studies of behavior following disasters have shown that groups working together in the disaster period perform more effectively if there has been prior planning for disaster response. These studies show that organized grassroots efforts may be more successful if they are woven into the social and political fabric of the community-neighborhood associations, schools, workplaces, places of worship, and other existing organizations.
Effective response therefore requires comprehensive planning and coordination of all who will be involved-government, volunteer groups, private businesses, schools, and community organizations. With training and information, individuals and community groups can be prepared to serve as a crucial resource capable of performing many of the emergency functions needed in the immediate post-disaster period. The Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program is designed to help communities prepare for effective disaster response through training and planning.
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How CERTs Operate:
As each CERT is organized and trained and in accordance with standard operating procedures developed by the sponsoring agency, its members select a team leader and an alternate and identify a meeting location, or staging area, to be used in the event of a disaster.
The staging area is where the fire department and other services will interact with CERTs. Having a centralized contact point makes it possible to communicate damage assessments and allocate volunteer resources more effectively.
Damage from disasters may vary considerably from one location to another. In an actual disaster, CERTs are deployed progressively and as needs dictate. Members are taught to assess their own needs and those in their immediate environment first.
CERT members who encounter no need in their immediate area then report to their staging area, where they take on assigned roles based on overall area needs. Members who find themselves in a heavily affected location send runners to staging areas to get help from available resources. Ham and CB radio links also may be used to increase communication capabilities and coordination.
The CERT program can provide an effective first-response capability. Acting as individuals first, then later as members of teams, trained CERT volunteers can fan out within their assigned areas, extinguishing small fires, turning off natural gas inlets to damaged homes, performing light search and rescue, and rendering basic medical treatment. Trained volunteers also offer an important potential workforce to service organizations in nonhazardous functions such as shelter support, crowd control, and evacuation.
The CERT Training Program:
In the next 8 sessions, you will be trained in such basic self-help and mutual-aid emergency functions as:
Disaster preparedness.
Fire safety.
Disaster medical operations (2 sessions).
Light search and rescue.
CERT organization.
Disaster Psychology.
Terrorism and CERT.
Classes are taught by trained emergency personnel, including firefighters and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) personnel. The program consists of 20 hours of training and emphasizes hands-on practice.
