Become Disaster Resilient! Start your CERT Team!
What you'll learn
- Explain what CERT is.
- Determine if a CERT is right for your community
- Determine if you already have a CERT close by?
- List the necessary support from local government
- Establish buy-in with your elected officials and community leaders
- Engage state and federal resources to help you build a CERT
- Enlist your family, friends and neighbors in becoming CERT safe!
- Recruit potential CERT members and help retain members
- Engage local news media to help you market CERT
- Manage your CERT volunteers to sustain the program
- Demonstrate what a CERT team does
Requirements
- You only need a desire to learn disaster preparedness for you, your family and your neighbors
Description
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!
Who this course is for:
- Anyone can succeed in this course! If you or you and several others are interested in a CERT for your area, you will suceed by following these principles!
Instructor
![Dale Justice](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 64 64"%3E%3C/svg%3E){kind=avatar}
- 4.4 Instructor Rating
- 95 Reviews
- 300 Students
- 4 Courses
As a former Assistant Fire Chief in a 200+ person department, I retain an extensive and well balanced background in planning, education, management and operations.
Beginning my career as a firefighter and paramedic, I have worked in operations, fire prevention, training and emergency management for over 30 years with additional experience in planning, emergency services and emergency management. I was agency deployed as part of an incident management team for three of the five major 2004 hurricanes for recovery operations and part of the local Emergency Operations Center activation every year.
I hold certifications in Florida certified hazardous material technician and Intelligence Liaison Officer for the Central Florida Fusion Center. I have worked at Indian River State college as an adjunct instructor teaching fire science degree level courses and an A.S. degree in Fire Science and a B.A. degree in organizational management. My experience includes response to four major hurricanes and rostered as Operations Chief for the State of Florida Incident Management "Gold Team."
I created, taught and managed our local community training for CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) and served as county Fire Marshal and as a Florida Certified Fire Inspector. I served as Fire Department Training Officer for 10 years. During that time I created and implemented several programs including: Writing a grant for ambulance powered patient stretchers to prevent back injury and reduce workmen compensation claims, grant for fire extinguisher simulator obtained, created a professional officer development program, increased the use of Incident Command and Accountability Systems to prevent firefighter injury.
I worked with the governors & senate office to insure damage claims from Hurricane Sandy were documented and reported. Served as liaison to the Department of Defense and Sheriff during a mapping program in the Atlantic ocean resulting in the discovery and safe disposal of two 200 pound bombs used during the 1940’s in WWII assault training.