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