What is CERT?
CERT stands for Community
Emergency Response Team.
Who
first developed CERT?
In
1985, the Los Angeles Fire Department began developing CERT.
Who makes up the CERT team? The CERT team is made up of ordinary citizens.
What
is a CERT course? CERT offers disaster readiness courses to ordinary citizens.
These courses teach citizens how to respond to disaster situations, and
how to cope with the aftermath. With training, CERT trainees are considered
an extension of first responders who are capable of handling situations
for victims until professionals arrive on the scene. FEMA has made CERT
training available in one hundred and seventy communities. CERT participants
are trained and maintained as part of a neighborhood or workplace response
team. CERT members assist in their neighborhood or workplace.
CERT
program instruction:
CERT instructors are first
responders who all attend official Train The Trainer
sessions. The training citizens
receive
is usually over a period of seven weeks, one
two and a half hour session once weekly. Each week covers a new topic;
and each week
citizens
bring
the supplies for the lesson, gradually building
their core Disaster Emergency Kit. Each program is designed around
specific responder
goals. Goals and
training are designed according to the likelihood
of local disasters, though classes tend to take on lives of their own,
when trainers
respond to each class individually. The whole CERT
program tends to grow and develop
over time.
CERT
Home Page
CERT Los Angeles Home Page
CERT
Los Angeles Class Calender
Are you interested in being a CERT Battalion Coordinator? Los Angeles CERT
is looking for coordinators for the West Side and the Northwest
Valley in particular. E-Mail
Link