By Aileen B. Flores
The El Paso Times
EL PASO, Texas — Ruby Orosco is an assistant asset manager at an apartment complex in Northeast El Paso, mother of a 6-year-old girl, and knows what to do in case of a disaster.
But Orosco did not know anything about emergency response except to dial 911.
Last week, she volunteered to participate in the Community Emergency Response Team program at the Northeast Regional Command Center, where more than 20 Housing Authority of El Paso employees were trained on how to respond to catastrophies.
“Many of us didn’t know simple things like how to shut off the water and gas on our house in case we need to,” she said.
Orosco said one of the first lessons was to put out a small fire using an extinguisher.
“We have them all over the workplace but we don’t know how to use them in case of an emergency,” she said.
But the most important lesson was to communicate and work with other people, she said.
Orosco said she will be able to share her knowledge with her family. She said she plans on setting up an evacuation plan at home.
“Hopefully we never have to use it, but we have to be prepared,” she said
The program’s goal is to get people involved in search, rescue, first aid and teach them how to respond in case of a disaster, said community services Officer Slade Davis.
He said participants learned basic disaster response skills such as fire safety, light search and rescue, team organization, and disaster medical operations.
People who have never met communicate with each other and work together for a common goal, said El Paso Police Department Officer and search instructor Jose Milian.
Milian said the training is available without cost to the public through the Rio Grande Council of Governments.
The training is for neighborhood watch groups, community organizations, school staffs, businesses and any other group that wants to participate.
The problem is that a lot of neighborhood groups do not participate, Milian said. Most participants come from companies that can afford the time their employees take to get the training.
In a neighborhood, there are people who have different jobs with different schedules, which makes it hard to get a cohesive group with the time to do the three-day training, Milian said.
The course involves two days of lecture and a practical exercise with the El Paso Fire Department.
For a training session, instructors need approximately 20 participants, but not less than 15, in order to form groups and do the practices, Milian said.
“The larger the group the better the training will be,” he said.
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