Talk:Community emergency response team

"Amateur"

I'm going to object to the word "amateur". It is true that CERTs are not professional emergency responders, but the word amateur implies that they are unskilled or untrained. I think that volunteer would be a more fitting word. Cashcraft 20:21, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

The phrase "Amateur" refers to FCC Licensed Amateur Ham Radio Operator. The phrase "Amateur" is important to use because we cannot charge for communications services. Ojaivalleycert (talk) 01:23, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

The word "Amateur" is correctly used in this document, and I do not see the reason for the objection by the originating user but i am in agreement with the second user about it's use of the word in this document. Although CERT cannot charge for radio communications purposes, CERT Members with either a HAM License, trained in ARES (debatable), etc. can still apply to CERT Training if used properly. WABA West Allis Goalballer (talk) 18:43, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Disaster Service Worker

A disaster service worker is actually an unpaid employee of the state (at least in California) in times of disaster. This has been detailed later in the article. I'm replacing the phrase disaster service worker with volunteer emergency responder to avoid confusion. Cashcraft 20:21, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Attention Tag

A lot of the information on this page is based on information that is old, outdated or unverified. Since CERT teams are a US phenomenon, the content on this page should conform to FEMA's guidelines for CERT Teams. The introduction and the Community emergency response section are badly in need of a rewrite and update. FEMA's CERT page is at http://www.citizencorps.gov/cert/. Cashcraft 06:14, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree on the need for an update. This article also lacks reference to recent directive concerning CERT members being ICS/NIMS trained. Further, the Community Emergency Response section focuses too heavily on volunteer response strategies which are California specific (like bag on the bed because of earthquake) or better placed in other pages/categories (like the home survival kit contents). I believe this article should focus more on the certified, uniform training all CERT members (should) receive as proscribed by the DHS training materials. Likewise in the training section; the current discussion is long on specific local recruitment tools (not universal by any means), but very short on the actual training techniques.--Parradoxx 22:47, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

As "one person's take" on the subject, I like this article.

Being a CERT trainee, former Air Nat Guard unit disaster preparedness officer, firefighter and EMT (and currently a nurse), I find the material here superior to the materials I was issued for the class. They are more engaging and address some practicalities not covered in the class. It should have the caveat that the situations described as far as how volunteer trainees are handled may vary widely according to local social norms, and how the individual initiating bodies choose to organize and visualize their CERT people's potential for aid. In many places, CERT is a social phenomenon like a volunteer fire department, while in others mostly it helps saturate a population with semi-trained citizens who may be of help, but who aren't going to "swing into action" as shown in the training videos.

I'm new to this and would like to discuss this material with the article's prime author.

Excuse me?

QUOTE The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recommends that the standard, ten-person team be comprised as follows:

   * Team Leader. (1 person)
   * Fire Suppression Team (2 people)
   * Search and Rescue Team (2 people)
   * Medical Triage Team (2 people)
   * Medical Treatment Team (2 people)

END QUOTE

FEMA can be pretty incompetent sometimes, but not THAT incompetent. Surely they can count to ten correctly.

70.231.161.189 23:23, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

This article needs some cleaning

Does this page really need to list all the supplies necessary for a disaster? That information can just be found on a simple link, in my opinion. I'd edit this, but I don't have the time at the moment. Rebelyell2006 (talk) 16:21, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

CPR

I have removed the reference to CPR being part of the CERT curriculum. During my CERT training earlier this summer, it was made clear to us that CPR is simply too resource-intensive to use in a large-scale disaster situation. In the time required to save one person through CPR, any number of other victims may die from conditions that would not have required as much time and attention from a responder. There's a very short checklist one goes through to determine if a victim is alive or not: if the victim's airway is not obstructed and there is still no breathing, you mark the victim "DEAD" and move on.

Now, plenty of people will stop searching for victims and apply CPR to the first victim they reach, but this is not part of standard CERT protocol. Obviously, if this is the only victim, then the protocol would not apply, but CERT training is generally targeted at incidents on a larger scale, where EMS and other emergency personnel would not be arriving for hours or days.

I must say that the prospect of writing "DEAD" on someone's forehead is a chilling one, and not something I'd look forward to.

*Septegram*Talk*Contributions* 01:16, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

CERT training is dependent upon what each individual community's team deems to be proper training. Perhaps not ALL CERT's have had CPR; however, there are indeed teams that HAVE had such training. And I agree, the tagging of a body is a very sobering act. I think that many CERT groups may only provide large scale disaster support, but there are some small community groups that also support local PD and VFD efforts with much simpler calls. I agree that in large scale disaster situations, CPR doesn't come into play (as you mention above), and r/y/b (red, yellow, black) designations are quickly applied. I'm not trying to get anything back into the article, I trust you judgment on that one, I just wanted to make note of the fact that at least one CERT group does provide CPR and First Aid training through the Red Cross. Thank you for your time (and your service) Ched (talk) 13:31, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I addded a comment on CPR to the section on training, as the reason why CPR is NOT a part of the core curriculum is important in understanding disaster response. To keep it NPV, the CPR reference was given as it applies to the Citizen Corps curriculum. For what it's worth, teams/programs in Kansas all generally require CPR, too, for the reasons you suggested, Ched. -- Parradoxx (talk) 17:41, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

My CERT jurisdiction has CPR as a course one can take after they complete the basic course.

Also, it seems like if you were told to go and find somebody, and that specific person needs CPR, you give it, but other than that you a) note them down for later (during a hasty search), or you just slap/gently place on the duct tape tag and move on to the next person. Villaida (talk) 15:07, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Recruitment

This section was formerly named Training and Organization. I renamed it recruitment since the bulk of the detail in the section is various techniques for recruiting or retaining members. After having renamed it, I am looking at removing the entire section. Very little information in the section is specific to CERT and is broadly applicable to any organization looking to recruit members. Any rebuttal? -- Parradoxx (talk) 23:00, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

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Self deploy?

A team may self-activate (self-deploy) when their own neighborhood is affected by disaster.

I just went through CERT training and they specifically said CERT teams do not self deploy. Loren Pechtel (talk) 19:51, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

I just completed my training yesterday, and we were told we would self-deploy, although the term probably needs defining. The CERT volunteer is strongly encourage to make sure their family, home and neighbors are safe, and then go to their staging area. They shouldn't expect any official to be standing around to give them orders, they just need to set up and get to work: ergo, "self-deploy". That doesn't mean they have to determine what is and isn't an emergency, since if it isn't glaringly obvious, they'll probably be getting either SMS alerts, or hear emergency radio broadcasts. But it has to be assumed that there might be zero "official" mobilization or deployment order in a sufficiently disruptive disaster, and they just need to get down to it. MrRedwood (talk) 22:35, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

I agree with MrRedwood, and wanted to make an additional point of clarity - as people, we have a choice at any time to do something to help our neighbor. The fact that I have training in how to provide a higher quality of aid in a specific subject matter doesn't remove that choice, and in many cases it creates an obligation to help. The key to self-activation for teams of trained people is that they respond in their own neighborhood, helping their neighbors in a safe and orderly fashion. What most sponsoring agencies seek to avoid is a group of gung-ho volunteers who start rummaging through some other community's damaged landscape without being plugged into the local ICS. I hope that clarifies, and thank you for receiving CERT training! Parradoxx (talk) 03:16, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

History of CERT seems key (along with a few other things)

Hello,

First of all I am somewhat surprised that there are a lot of aims to improve this by fellow CERTs.

I was looking over this article to try to help improve it (it's concerningly undersourced), and I noticed that out of all the things that the article contains, the history of CERT was not there. That caught my eye, because as a CERT member, I've been told how it got started, but well, non-CERTs might not know the history.

On top of that, in my experience, people have capitalized the first letter of every word when writing out Community Emergency Response Team. FEMA does that as well, and I'm wondering if we should stick to that. And, should the National CERT Association, the NCA (formed in 2019), be tied into the article as well? It might help enhance this article, which seems rather lacking in depth and somewhat not that informative. There's also a lot of references to FEMA, which is ok, but it would also be nice to branch away from leaning on FEMA to write the article.

The opening blurb seems like it best belongs in a different area of the article, and would probably look nicer and neater if it was reorganized and re-written.

How I'm thinking the article could be reorganized/rewritten:

- better opening blurb

- how the CERT org. works (maybe mention NCA (National CERT Association), whatnot)

- history of CERT, how it got started, how the training evolved

- notable times when CERT has responded

- I'm struggling to see how the "Member roles" part ties into anything - it seems best that this part gets merged or removed Villaida (talk) 15:03, 13 August 2024 (UTC)