Last summer, as the Las Conchas Fire devoured 150,000 acres of New Mexico wilderness and threatened the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Anne Probst, emergency preparedness and safety systems coordinator at Santa Fe Community College, got a call to activate the campus’s community emergency response team (CERT). The team had been formed in 2008 after a gunman shot and killed 32 people at Virginia Tech; school officials in Santa Fe wanted to arm their community with knowledge about how to react should they ever face a similar emergency or other crisis.
About 20 volunteers underwent the basic CERT training, a 20-hour course delivered over a seven-week period, which covers disaster preparedness, disaster fire suppression, basic disaster medical operations, light search and rescue, triage and damage assessment, team operations and how to handle a range of specific threats, from a gunman to terrorism to volcanic eruptions. Some of that knowledge was put to use during the wildfire as team members staffed shelters for more than 400 hours over four days, handing out blankets, setting up cots and a cell phone bank, and tending to the elderly. “It was a lifetime experience for many of us. Responding to emergencies is not our daily job, so it was an incredible learning experience,” Probst says. “Many times, our people were just sitting with folks, holding their hand. It was a tremendous experience and very gratifying to be able to help our neighbors.”
Probst and her team are one of some 2,085 CERTs operating in 50 states and six territories. Launched in 1985, CERT now represents a nationwide army of volunteers trained and willing to assist fire, EMS and other professional responders during disasters such as wildfires, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes and terrorism.
The idea behind CERT is that a large-scale disaster will overwhelm government resources, so having members of the public who are not just willing to help, but are trained to help, can fill that gap. Because CERT members are dispersed throughout the community, they may also get to the scene faster than responders. “The percentage of the population who are trained emergency services personnel is less than 1 percent,” says Rachel Jacky, national program director for CERT, which is part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA’s) Citizen Corps. “In any widespread emergency, the person saving your life or the life of somebody in your family could well be the neighbor next door. People have to know how to take care of themselves, but also to help other people and to do it safely.”
From hurricanes to tornadoes, even in the midst of the chaos and fear, one thing holds true, Jacky adds. “The phenomenon that is absolutely reliable in a widespread event is that people step up to help other people, but they don’t always have the training to do it, or to be as effective as they might, or to have the awareness to keep themselves safe,” she says. “That’s what CERT is intended to do.”
Raising a volunteer army
CERT got its start in Los Angeles, where fears of catastrophic earthquakes are ever present. In the early ’80s, Frank Borden, then with the Los Angeles Fire Department, visited Japan and Mexico City to learn about citizen preparedness in the wake of two major earthquakes there. Government responders, he found, didn’t have the resources to handle all the needs of the injured and displaced. He also found many people were willing to help, but few knew what to do or how to do it.
Back at home, Borden developed the first CERT program, with the first class of 25 people trained in the San Fernando Valley in 1986. CERT got a boost in 1987, after the Whittier Narrows earthquake southeast of Los Angeles caused $385 million in property damage. The quake shook Los Angeles city officials, who realized that the city needed a better response plan and wanted to support citizens learning self-sufficiency, Borden says.
“In a disaster, it takes a while for any responder to get to your problem,” he says. “Even on a day-to-day basis, it might take five-plus minutes. In a disaster, it might take an hour or more. The whole idea was that in any situation, citizens should be prepared to be a responder.”
Over the next several years, the concept spread to other parts of California and to other states, especially Florida, which has hurricanes to contend with.
In 1990, Frank Lucier, then with the San Francisco Fire Department, launched a similar program in his city, calling it NERT (neighborhood emergency response team). Lucier had been on duty the night of the Loma Prieta earthquake, which killed 63 people, injured nearly 3,800 and left thousands more homeless in 1989. “There was no water. There were fires and collapsed buildings,” he says. “Once we got a supply of water, we used the civilians to carry hoses and to rescue people by taking bricks off of them.
“People could be directed, but they didn’t come to the situation with any skills,” Lucier adds. “That really is the concept behind the NERT and the CERT program.” (Both programs are nearly identical, but San Francisco keeps the NERT moniker out of tradition.)
CERT further expanded in 1993 when FEMA, now part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), adopted the Los Angeles model and began making CERT training available nationally. The federal government also set up a registry to track state and local CERTs. In the wake of the World Trade Center attacks, with the country on high alert and the public more interested than ever in the need for preparedness, DHS gave out $17 million in 2002 and $19 million in 2003 in grants to states to expand the CERT program and train new volunteers.
Eventually, federal money specifically for CERT dwindled. (Money still flows from DHS to the states for emergency preparedness, some of which may still find its way to fund CERT programs, Jacky says, although she does not know how much.) But even without federal grant money, CERT has continued to thrive. “There was concern that without the funding the program would die, but communities recognized the importance of CERT and found other ways to continue it,” Lucier says. In many places, volunteers support CERT by paying for the training course and purchasing their own equipment, which consists of backpacks, goggles, a flashlight, gloves, a helmet and basic first-aid supplies. In San Francisco, the fire department offers CERT training free of charge, while a community college allows it to use a classroom and to copy training materials at no cost.
Even without a specific grant program, the national presence is important, Borden notes. The national CERT program helps ensure that the program is standardized across states, so when major disasters such as Hurricane Katrina occur, CERT volunteers can travel to the scene and local responders recognize them and know what training they have.
At FEMA, Jacky is the lone federal employee assigned to CERT. Her responsibilities include developing the CERT curriculum; maintaining the registry; maintaining a library of drills and exercises; and fielding questions from state and local CERTs. In addition, the national program provides support for CERT trainers, typically professional responders who have completed a CERT Train-the-Trainer course conducted at a state training office for emergency management or at FEMA’s Emergency Management Institute in Emmitsburg, Md.
All told, more than 429,000 Americans have completed CERT basic training. The curriculum enables communities to tailor training to their specific needs, with segments available on volcanoes, floods, excessive heat, nuclear power plant emergencies and pandemic flu, among other hazards.
“When this started, I don’t think anybody would envision what would really happen, which is the numbers of people trained, the quality of the training and the program coordination,” Lucier says.
Staying motivated
Still, there are challenges, including maintaining the public’s interest in preparedness, both those who are part of CERT and the wider society. Disasters and other events requiring a massive mobilization of resources happen rarely. So how to keep CERT volunteers engaged after their initial enthusiasm has worn off?
Over the years, CERT programs have found that providing opportunities for volunteers to work in their communities on everyday tasks helps with cohesion. In Santa Fe County, for example, CERT staffs first-aid stations along a route that thousands walk each June as part of a pilgrimage to El Santuario de Chimayo church. The team also conducts team-building exercises on a ropes course. “If we need to respond to a situation together, we need to have that trust and those types of close relationships,” Probst says. In Los Angeles—which has among the largest CERTs, with more than 40,000 trained and several thousand active members—team members staff first-aid stations at parades, marathons and free concerts.
“Nobody wants to be waiting for the next disaster,” Jacky says. “By participating in these events, members can both contribute to a safe and secure community and practice important skills.”
Yet despite CERT, significant gaps remain in public preparedness, says Eric Holdeman, a columnist for Emergency Management magazine and former emergency management director in King County, Wash. “We have gotten to this point in society where people think they’re going to be taken care of in some form or fashion,” he says.
Surveys bear that out. According to “Personal Preparedness in America: Findings From the 2009 Citizen Corps National Survey,” perceived preparedness among citizens can differ from actual measures they’ve taken. The report states that “the proportion of those who have taken appropriate preparedness measures is much lower than those that indicate that they are prepared.”
While half of the respondents said they’re familiar with emergency alerts and warning systems in their communities, 30 percent were not familiar at all. Nearly half (47 percent) said they were not familiar at all with how to get help evacuating or getting to a shelter. About 66 percent said they did not have a family emergency plan, including instructions about where to go and what to do in the event of a disaster; approximately one-half weren’t familiar with evacuation routes or shelter locations. About one-half said they were confident in knowing what to do in the first five minutes after a disaster such as an earthquake or tornado.
The most common reason for not preparing was the belief that emergency responders such as fire, police or other emergency personnel would help them (29 percent). Other reasons included a lack of knowledge (24 percent) and lack of time (26 percent).
One place attitudes have changed about who will take care of people during an emergency: onboard airlines, Holdeman says. After 9-11, people quickly realized that in the air, they aren’t going to rely on the pilot, the flight attendants or the authorities on the ground. “They know the first line of defense is themselves,” Holdeman says. “What we need to do is to get people on the ground to have the same attitudes as people in the air.”
Cooperation is key
With CERT, volunteer rescuers have the advantage of having some instruction in how to handle a particular situation. Which brings up another issue: how to make sure CERT is accepted by professional responders as a partner that can be called on during a crisis.
The community involvement of CERT has given volunteers greater visibility and has led to a greater acceptance of citizen responders among professionals, Jacky says. Joint training exercises are now more common. At Santa Fe Community College, for example, the team trained alongside the pros to learn how to respond to an “active killer” simulation and a plane crash at a local airport.
CERT also helps in more ordinary crises. During one recent month, for example, a Houston-area CERT set up a shelter for about 100 residents displaced by an apartment fire; a CERT in Maryland helped police search for an elderly man with dementia who had gone missing; and a CERT in Norwalk, Va., helped residents clean up after storms downed power lines and ripped out trees.
In 71 percent of communities with CERT programs listed in the national registry, CERT is included in the community’s emergency operations plan, signifying that it’s an accepted and integrated part of emergency response. “In a large emergency that requires coordination, the emergency operations plan accounts for who is going to do what,” Jacky says. “The fact that CERT is included has to do with the legitimatization and importance of CERT in the responder community.”
So where to go from here, and to what extent can the continued expansion of CERT help bridge the public preparedness gap? Borden, the “father of CERT,” says not everybody, of course, will be interested in volunteering or taking the training. However, the program should be expanded so that areas of the country that are prone to natural disasters have an extensive and viable CERT program. State, county and local governments need to take the lead in making sure CERT is well-established in their areas. An opportune time, he adds, is right after a disaster hits, when public interest peaks.
If history is any guide, the need for CERT isn’t going away anytime soon—and, given the economic pressures on government services, it’s likely to increase. “Professional services are very expensive. I believe for a community to be prepared, it involves getting individuals to accept responsibility for themselves and their family, and to provide a framework for organized response,” Holdeman says. “CERT fits in there.”
For more on CERT, visit citizencorps.gov/cert.
