Some thoughts on CERT

One thing I neglected to mention in my post about networks the other day was that I’m not only thinking about plans when you are away from home, but also developing some kind of network inside your own community can be very helpful. That’s one of the reasons I decided to take CERT classes here in LA in fact. Making sure that you are covered is one thing, but I thought it might be valuable to both know what I could do after an event to help my community, as well as who else in my neighborhood was out there doing the same thing. At the very least I thought it would provide some more valuable skills and info for keeping me and my family safe.

When I first looked into it honestly I was confused by the schedule on the local site but luckily I had some more patient friends who figured out when a class nearby was starting. You can find something near you on the national site and then try to decipher their scheduling on your own. If you aren’t familiar with CERT it’s short for Community Emergency Response Training and is basically a 7 week course that covers a wide range of disasters that might occur in your area and things you can do to help out. The initial set up is that in any given disaster official services are going to be overextended in minutes and most people will be on their own, so if you have a basic level of training and can team up with others in your neighborhood there is a lot of work you can do on your own before real rescue teams ever show up. This seemed like worthwhile info to have.

Last night was the 6th class so assuming all goes well I’ll graduate next week. Obviously my comments only apply to the specific class I’m taking, and the make up of that class has a lot to do with that but as it’s a standardized course on a national level I’m guessing much of this probably applies across the board. On the first day of class the instructor went around the room and asked everyone who they were and why they were there. About half the class expressed similar feelings as the ones I mentioned above. The other half were applying for a job at a local outreach program that required all applicants to have passed CERT. This created a weird dynamic to some extent because about half the class really didn’t want to be there. I think if there was a way to prescreen students and put those with interest in the topic in one class and those taking it out of requirement in another it might have helped things move along at a much different pace.

The info covered is actually really detailed and useful. I detest straight slide presentations which is 90% of what the class it built on, but the information is actually well organized in my opinion. And the videos, while being a good 30 years old are at least amusing. I think the most valuable classwork has been the interactive hands on work and the scenario based Q&A. With some of the classes hitting the 3 hour mark, being engaged and actually doing things makes the info sink in much better and I’ve found those to be actually pretty fun.

What hasn’t been so fun is the near endless assault of stupid questions from the class, many from the aforementioned % that didn’t want to be there in the first place. To his credit our instructor has been very patient and thoughtfully answered everything that has been asked. Unfortunately some of the class feels that because this one guy they knew one time told them they read something somewhere that they know more about some of these topics than a trained firefighter who deals with them on a professional basis. In a way that’s kind of education in itself though, because you get to see how locked into an idea or behavior some people can be without any idea of how factual it might be. They’d rather not be wrong than have better information.

Where some folks might have found that all annoying, and I admit I did a bit too, it actually hammers home the need for this kind of training on an individual level. There’s no guarantee that emergency services will be there, and it’s a pretty good guarantee that the volunteer aid workers who hopefully will be there might not have any idea what they are doing so better to learn it for yourself.

Because of all this I think the class might have actually worked better as a weekend long course but I understand that when developing a plan like this they need to create a format that works for the most people at once. I’ll be interested to see what the advanced levels have to offer which I’ll be looking into after next weeks graduation. We’ve been told we’ll be given the coveted green CERT vest and helmets then as well, but there still seems to be confusion about if we’ll get CERT Backpacks or not. The CERT Spokesman I talked to in Venice the other day said the city of LA had tons of these and all current graduates would be getting them, but our instructor said the city has been out of them for a long time. Such is life with volunteer federally funded organizations.

I’ve said it before, gear comes and goes and breaks or is unreliable where as training sticks with you and can be the thing that makes the survival difference for you. I’m already making my wish list of courses to take after this, anything you think I should be considering?