Tom,

I am sorry to hear that your CERT training did not provide the best they could have done. Since the training for CERT is all locally administered each community gets a variety of efforts. My community did an exceptional job using off-duty firefighters as trainers and support people during the many hands-on bits of our days. I wondered how 2-long days could do what we did, and now I think I see that it could not.

CERT is not meant to produce first-responders. That just cannot be given the scope and limited time and resources...however it can do better and should do better.

Each of our classroom days was divided into lessons then hands-on. Each participant got to use fire extinguishers, fire hose, cribbing, triage, searches in semi-realistic settings, and organization practices....rain cold and sun did not keep us confined to the classroom.

I think it is too bad that more resources are not devoted to this sort of community based training.

Did the family or the scouts at least come away with a desire to work out basic scenarios for their families or at least build a 72 hr kit?