I agree that CERT is certainly minimal training overall, but probably its most important aspect is that the graduates have some awareness of taking care of themselves, family and neighbors when presented with overwhelming local problems. Simply having a mindset that local first responders may not get to you or your neighborhood in a large scale disaster, knowing a few steps to take to assist your very local community in those days has got to be one of the best aspects of CERT. So many people think their community will handle everything....this just will not be, so CERT at a minimum opens peoples eyes to the limited resouces and gives some basic information and training that can be useful.

CERT deployment, use etc is all dependent on the local understanding and preplanning for disaster mitigation. Our community CERT program is very recent (2years) and we do not have enough members, but the community has tried to incorporate the teams into the plans and I think will benefit from doing so.

If the first responders can make use of the teams that would be great, but in our community I think the CERT teams may end up being the first responders in their neighborhoods. They can and will organize their friends and neighbors to work very locally and therefore not burden the professional teams with the more minor responsibilities. We have communication capabilities to the firehouse and city hall, we have damage assesment teams who can locate, secure and report problems, and we have the very basic training that comes from CERT to take on some tasks independent of the first responders. Evacuation of unsafe buildings, shelter management, small fires, gas meter leaks, water leaks etc are all within the scope of our CERT groups.

The fact that we have stressed communication from field to the emergency operations center is a huge aspect IMO.

Our training strongly stressed evaluation of the incident and awareness of our role prior to any action. Our safety above all else so as not to magnify the problem.

The training is very minimal, the diversity of topics is so broad, that no one should graduate from the class with even a remote though of being a fully-trained emergency worker. However we should know what roles are possible, and know that in certain disasters how our efforts can assist the community.

Our CERT groups also stress additional training strongly.

I think that any public safety administration that has not considered the use of volunteers in a disaster is foolish. People will turn out to help....it will be far better if at least a portion of those who turn out have some background and can at least serve to organize the volunteers.

Yesterday on I-5 North of Seattle there was a multi-car accident. Two cars were on fire and one car with trapped live occupants was jammed into one of the flaming cars. A quick thinking truck driver hooked this car to a tow rope and dragged it away from the flames. His actions saved the trapped occupants. If the crowd would have waited for first responders far more than one would have died. Several people assisted in this accident.

As a side note: the emergency service group that I belong to had a dinner last night. 24 "Presidents Volunteer Service Awards" were presented. These ranged from those who had contributed 100+ up to 4000+ hours of public service. This group consists of both CERT and RACES teams. Having an active group that trains, learns, and develops is really the backbone of volunteer efforts like CERT.

I encourage people to contact their civic leaders and ask about the community emergency plans. I think it is far better to be an active participant than a passive victim.