Community Emergency Response Team (CERT)
Emergency Management Institute CERT Web site
From residents to responders - Community-minded program prepares residents
to respond to disasters.
Jerry Horton has experienced his share of disasters. Then again, not
everybody has spent 32 years working for the New York state Emergency
Management Office.
Horton, now retired and living in the Woodlake community, remembered
an 18-month span in New York in which five federally declared disasters
occurred, including everything from floods to severe winter storms.
The lesson here: “Disasters are something that are going to happen,” Horton
said. “It's not an if; it's a when.”
Even in retirement, Horton stays focused on the inevitable. After moving
to Chesterfield County, he contacted the county's Office of Emergency
Management to learn about any public emergency-response training that
might be offered. Late this past summer, Horton and others graduated
from the first Community Emergency Response Training, or CERT, course
to be offered by the county's Department of Fire and Emergency Medical
Service's Fire and Life Safety Division.
CERT members gain basic knowledge needed to prepare for disasters and
help others during and after events.
With Hurricane Isabel in September, Chesterfield experienced its worst
natural disaster. Horton and other recent CERT graduates from Woodlake
were able to pitch in immediately, checking on residents and helping
Woodlake's maintenance crew clear trees from roads, providing access
for county emergency vehicles.
“We had an instant chance to test that training,” said Terry Sheets,
Woodlake's community manager.
“By the end of the day, we had the roads clear.”
Woodlake residents who have received CERT training are examples of what
the Fire and Life Safety Division would like to see in communities or
neighborhoods countywide.
“The goal of our CERT program is to have people in every neighborhood
trained,” said J. Amy Davis, CERT coordinator.
CERT training involves about 32 hours of training, plus an extra day
if a volunteer chooses to be certified in CPR, which is recommended.
Professionals teach basic response skills, including: disaster preparedness
at home, how to form and manage response teams among neighbors during
a disaster, light emergency-medical training, search and rescue, disaster
psychology, and hands-on skills practice.
In the event that public-safety professionals are overwhelmed in responding
to a disaster, CERT members can assist by applying the skills they've
learned from them. What CERT members learn can just as easily be applied
to everyday occurrences, such as automobile incidents, fires or accidents
around the home.
Safety for CERT members is a big focus of the training, Davis said.
“CERT volunteers have to learn how to be safe in order to help others
just like any professional working in public safety,” she said.
Emergency Management is coordinating the CERT program. Classes
are held several times a year. For more information contact Lynda
Price, (804) 748-1236 or pricel@chesterfield.gov.
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