I said I would post some comments afterwards, so here goes...

I DO think that if CERT training is offered in ones area, take advantage of the training. Even if it is bad, you will gain information that could be valuable to you in a number of ways, depending on your personal circumstances before and during a disaster.

I learned about CERT. That was great - I probably could have gotten the same info from reading through the course info. Afterwards I read about where our Governor directed 99.7% of the grant money (not for CERT and not outside of Cook County)... it's amazing the local folks got ANY grant money.

I'm scratching my head trying to figure out what exactly I did learn skills-wise, though. Ummm... wife and 3 sons reported they learned some things, but no one has been specific about exactly what.

The instructors seemed individually knowledgable and at least two were what I would call "professional", although neither of those two represented any local emergncy services organizations in any way. I think that the total lack of effective involvement by local emergency services organizations is inexcusable and that situation concerns me greatly.

NOTE: I was already concerned about the situation regarding local emergency coordinators - they are ignoring some extremely serious matters by not involving certain organizations, and I'm speaking professionally on THAT from firsthand knowledge and experience. The CERT training, to my dismay, confirmed my already low opinions of the local ESDAs and munincipal "emergency" coordinators (no exceptions). Back to the CERT training...

Poor quality instruction and very poor quality handouts. I printed copies of the materials from the fedgov - what was so hard about that? Looked like someone laboriously printed from the HTML and then did a poor job of photocopying, collating, hole punching, and assembling the mess. As for the instruction - some people can teach and some can't. We had "can'ts" for instructors. Nice people; hard working; dedicated; knew their stuff; couldn't teach for beans. Really - it was noteworthy for uniformly poor instruction.

Some of the material was really wrong - For example, they presented a lot of detail on California-style connecting and bracing of HW heaters, urging folks to go home right away and "fix up" the HWH at home... 1) We're located as close to zero as one can be for earthquake hazard on planet earth (spare me analysis - this is / has been a professional matter for me for a couple of decades - we don't have a significant hazard exactly right here). 2) The hookups they spent quite a bit of time on for gas and water are illegal here.. I guess it was just in the material, so they had to cover it... Ahem. There were many other technical inaccuracies, but the majority were benign in the sense that they would cause no harm. Example of a minor one: Boil water for at least 10 minutes to disinfect it.

Two 9-10 hour days, the vast majority of which was classroom lecture. But the vast majority of it should have been hands-on. Except for using ABC extinguishers on real flames, what little hands-on there was (and I mean VERY little) was really bad. Example: removing a victim pinned under a slab. Materials were a few buckets of (new) 2x4 scraps for cribbing, one 4' pry bar, and starring as a slab of concrete, a small folding table. I could make a telephone call and get them everything they need any weekday, free. They could keep the slab(s) or have them removed afterwards for free. THEY could make the phone call... this is NOT hard. It was totally bogus - a folding table does not react to prying like a slab no matter how hard one pretends. I saw scary stuff... And now we have a bunch of people who think they know how to do this - I shudder.

The disaster drill was inside the local ARC building. Nice new building - about 2 1/2 years old. Again, a telephone call (say, to me or any of a number of other local officials) and they could have had real buildings to train in - all sorts, from houses to industrial, including some that can be torn up. Realistic opportunites for free.

"Tell-Show-Do" - this is a time-honored formula precisely because it works rather well. It was not evident at the training we attended. In fact, some hands-on training was skipped because "...it's cold outside...". Well, gosh, I bet nothing bad could EVER happen here unless the weather was just perfect.

In a related observation: I think the instructors had no clue how to set-up and conduct hands-on training, no clue how to resource it, and had a STRONG desire to conduct the training in two long days instead of over a longer period of time. Now that last part is not meant as a criticism - that sort of decision has to be made for training volunteers, and IMHO their decision was not a bad one. But how they carried it out was poor.

I could keep going on in this vein, but I don't believe this is a typical situation from what I have heard. So it was a bit of a stinker here; Schwert and others had completely different (good) experiences with CERT training that I like to believe are more typical.

Equipment... actually, given the intent described to us, I think they made some good decisions for the long haul even though it is a bit crippling at first - this is a money-constrained situation. Good hard hats, good enough gloves, OK goggles, lots of barrier gloves, and (important) good daypacks - very sturdy; good bang-for-buck. Battery-less flashlights (the shake-to-charge type LED) were, IMHO, a good idea for this - nothing to maintain, no bulb to break, no batteries to be checked. Modest light output? Sure. But they worked fine and would get the job done. All of us Troop 258 folks had brighter lights in our pockets (EDC stuff) and I've dropped another hand torch (3AA x 4 LED) in my CERT pack, but actually a smart choice. Very little in the way of FAK items - not even enough to handle a moderate cut, BUT they did spend an acceptable amount of time discussing (not simply lecturing) on expedients. The stated intent is to issue lots more of that stuff when money permits. I suggest that meanwhile, they include a "chinese menu" of items that folks can stuff in the packs for little or no cost. I'd rather have clean towels, sheets, sanitary napkins, vetwrap, etc. already in the pack than have to scrounge on-site, at least until I run out...

Both groups did VERY well in the drill, despite the handicaps. I was impressed with the participants. And I'll give credit to the instructors for whatever they did to instill that attitude in the participants. It was not all bad, to be certain. And some of our instructers actually have deployed to regional disasters to perform CERT-related tasks, which lent credibility to the whole deal. They didn't do SAR, of course, but they DID do many other CERT tasks in real disasters.

If I had written this weeks earlier, I would have ranted more. My large concerns are that the local agencies continue to completely miss the boat (and CERT is about the least of those concerns) and that a lot of people left here thinking they are now ready to deal with CERT tasks in the real world.

Again, I think this is potentially great training if it is offered in your area. Those of us in areas with high probabilities of large-scale disasters especially...

Tom

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.

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?

Martin,

I was not writing much about Fire Departments. Don't know about your community, but around here (all of the communities), the municipal "fathers" have given disaster management to the "Ninjas" and the like - very wrong.

Most disasters need police support and involvement IN A SUPPORTING ROLE; a few are nearly the exclusive domain of police departments (who may find themselves "attached" to state and/or federal outfits in large disasters). Many more are most properly the purvue of the local Fire Departments, and the remainder are probably best handled by whatever passes for "Public Works" in your community.

The local travesties here include that the poor Chiefs of Police have been charged with the lead role - mostly wrong threats! And they (PDs) are ill-suited professionally to think about covering all the needs in most situations that don't require direct application of law enforcement. The best choice for overall coordinator would be Fire Chief, with the Chief of Police in charge of any tactical/law enforcement needs. I understand Joint and Combined operations very well, but apparently cities around here don't have a clue.

Most communities give the Fire Chief and/or the Building Official great powers to act in emergencies - powers that are not granted to Police Chiefs. That ready authority can be critical when swift actions are called for. I won't belabor this further in a public forum.

Further, the county guys are not planning with all their lights turned on either and they are the "regional" lead for large scale operations. The state-level oversight is... p*** poor. Again, I'm not going to go into details in a public forum.

At this CERT training one local Assistant Fire Chief is involved, but it appears to be a personal involvement. BTW, that medium sized city has had the Ch of PD also acting as the Ch of FD for quite some time - absolutely astonishing; he doesn't have a clue about FD operations. He's a prety good Ch of PD AFAIK, but politics, not reason, rule in that city (thank God it's not my town).

So our local circumstances mitigate against FD interest. No one you know was intentionally slighted in my post <grin>. And to be clear: I am NOT slamming the PDs either - locally they were given imposible tasks they can not afford to take the time to understand let alone do well. I think we have very good local PDs.

About the only "advantage" we have locally is an experienced, seasoned, and capable Corps of Engineers District - a real knuckle-draggin, get-it-done operating district, not some sissy political-convenience district (one 180 miles to the East of us comes to mind....) ...except the local authorities usually forget to involve them in serious planning (sure do holler for their help when it hits the fan, though) Want a disadvantage? Federal Region V on this side of the river; Region VII on the other side. Trust me, that sucks in the real world... OTOH, the local Corps deals with both daily, so they again are an advantage.

As for the other comments you made - there are folks like that fellow in most large scale operations IME. Some of them are incredibly persistent and often one pops up who has or thinks he has political connections. CERT has nothing to do with it; the phenonemom existed long before CERT existed.

As for FDs helping CERT - nah; it's all about the other way around, writ VERY large. See, my main reason for going was to find out about CERT so *I* have some idea where, if anywhere, they fit into large scale operations. The problem that I saw (and didn't comment on very clearly) is evident in your post - most emergency services agencies really do not understand CERT at all.

Since you brought it up - let's take CPR - CERT teams are specifically told NOT to attempt CPR - the training concentrates a lot on triage, and CPR cases would wind up in the mortuary pile in those scenarios. If there are enough folks around to perform CPR on victims who need it, you don't need CERTs around. CERT is NOT a volunteer EMT kind of a deal. The EMTs in my group were visibly distraught over decisions they had to make on the fly in the mass casualty disaster exercise we did - but they did what they were supposed to do AS CERT MEMBERS. Kudos. Train how you plan to fight, I say...

I'm gonna say this again: I recommend folks look into CERT in their area. If you have any sort of leadership role in community disaster response, I URGE you to take CERT training or you're at risk of making decisions based on ignorance. CERT has a very narrow role; learn it. If you need CERTs, you're REALLY going to need them. See Ratstr's website and read his comments here - he's been there, done that. Better to have folks who have been trained to specific roles than mobs of uncoordinated and undisciplined rabble "trying to help" - which will happen regardless. You need to take the training to gain that understanding of the POTENTIAL application of CERTs. The rest is BS over a beer in a bar.

And the local training still sucked quality-wise ... <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> ... but I learned what I needed to learn. I try to remember that my mind is like a parachute...

Best regards,

Tom