In defense of local organizations - like the fire department I run with - I'd like to point out that each year, I have at least 50 days of training, plus another 20-30 scheduled department events, and then I have all the fire calls to make. Last year, I put in 907 hours of my time to the fire department. The CERT training is, at best, simplistic, and at worst, gives a false sense of ability to those who take it. I don't have an extra 14 hours to spend sitting through a course that has stuff like basic CPR and how to avoid live wires, because I'm performing CPR on real people and avoiding live wires. It sounds a little short, but I really feel fairly full up in terms of training. It's worse for the EMT's - they have 200 hours of additional training needed every year. We're volunteers. We do what we can, we can't be constantly in every possible training, because we need to eat and sleep and work.

That said - I don't think we can help the CERT program. I was wholly unimpressed with their team's performance during the floods of the delaware here in September. We even has a member of the CERT doing "freelance" buiding, searches, charging gas to FEMA (he flashed his "CERT" card and told the gas station to bill it to FEMA) and more. We eventually had to have to police deal with him. I can do without help like that.

Your obersvations match mine on terms of the course materials and presentations that I've seen. I've not participated in the program, but havign seen what they are doing I'd say it's a waste of tax money.