Survive Disaster! Start your CERT Team!

Course details

Learn what a Community Emergency Response Team does, where to find a CERT class, how to join or start one and how to keep it alive. Includes some generic checklists and online Federal and State resources. This course will take around 4 hours to complete. The course is an online course.

Why take this course? Imagine a tornado or flood has hit your neighborhood. You were not told to evacuate. You check your family and house to make sure they are OK. They are. But when you look out the window, you see several neighbors are in their yard injured, one house is damaged and you know an elderly woman lives there alone. There is a small fire beginning in one house.

In an emergency, what do you do first? Help the injured? Great. Now what do you do next? Search the single woman's house? Fight the fire? How much of this can you do alone? Did you call 911? Oh, circuits are busy because this affected many neighborhoods. Emergency response will be delayed. Now what? Your neighbors are coming to you to find out what THEY should do. What will you tell them? When emergency responders arrive how do you tell them what is going on and get your neighbors help?

CERT is the program that teaches you and your neighbors (or business co-workers) what to do in an emergency. Churches, businesses, colleges and schools use CERT training to prepare their staff and students.

CERT training can be tailored to specific needs and is sponsored by local emergency management, fire or police departments.

Many CERT programs used trained CERT members to support their emergency response in the Emergency Operations Center, Police administration or to feed and water firefighters on large fires.

As a CERT member, you will receive a CERT response kit that will let you grab and go when a disaster threatens. Then mobilize your neighbors and join the team.

After you take a CERT basic training class (which covers organizing your team, medical first aid and triage, firefighting, hazmat, search, rescue, disaster psychology and communications), we show you how to find funding sources, engage local emergency responders and train for the disaster most likely to affect your community.

Finally, find out how to maintain the program and keep your membership roster full!