Program Maintenance
After the initial involvement with the hands-on training, how do you keep CERT graduates actively involved with the team and maintain their readiness? CERT trainers emphasize that this requires planning, communicating with team members, offering continued training opportunities, and recognizing CERT member accomplishments.
1. Recruitment
Planning to keep team members involved begins with a well thought out recruiting plan. If groups that you train have an existing bond, CERT adds to and strengthens that cohesion. These groups already have a reason for knowing and working with each other-geographic, social, philosophic, or economic; CERT becomes another part of that group's "common purpose" for being together. Working with friends, neighbors, or fellow employees keeps the process going. Then in the event of a disaster, they know and have trained together. You will have individuals who will take the training and not become members of a team. This is ok since they are individually better prepared. However, CERT training encourages teams and buddies for safety and support reasons.
What are some of the likely groups for CERT Training?
- Neighborhood Watch
- Parent-Teacher Organizations (some CERT use a school as a staging area if they activate)
- Neighborhood and homeowners associations
- Church groups
- Members of a business or industry (the disaster may happen when at work)
- Grange
- Wards
- Responders' families
- Government offices
- AARP
- Explorer Scouts
- Amateur Radio Club
- Volunteer Ski Patrol
- And many more
However, if you train members of a group that meet occasionally (AARP, Scouts) who are not geographically connected as a neighborhood team would be, you should refer CERT graduates to an appropriate neighborhood or employee team after their initial training. It is most likely that if called upon in a Major Disaster, they would respond with a group near to where they live or work. They should know and exercise with them.
The next challenge is to keep CERT members enthusiastic and committed.
2. COMMUNICATION
Everyone wants to be informed; they want to be included. Establishing a means to regularly communicate information to CERT members is a way to maintain their interest and involvement. The most common method used by CERT organizations is the newsletter.
You can provide:
- Information on scheduled training activities such as new CERT classes for recruits, refresher training, CERT exercises, special events, location of teams and staging areas, and human-interest stories.
- Tips about ways to mitigate against, prepare for, and recover from disasters.
- Information that reinforces training such as articles on utility control, triaging, safety, buddy system, decision-making etc.
A CERT coordinator using paid or volunteer staff can produce the newsletter. You can send the newsletters through the mail or have team representatives deliver them to their team members.
Another method to communicate and conduct a CERT activity at the same time is providing information using the team's phone tree. You can disseminate information (e.g., upcoming events, special offers on equipment) and practice phone activation.
In San Francisco, the CERT Coordinator holds quarterly meetings with team leaders at the Office of Emergency Services. This process recognizes the importance of the team and provides a vehicle for give and take among the teams and emergency management.
REMEMBER to communicate about CERT to your own response organizations. This is important so that first responders know about CERT, the scope of their training, when they will respond, their value in saving and sustaining lives immediately following a disaster, and how a team can assist them. Responders need to trust that a trained CERT can add to the community's response capability following a major event.
3. MAINTAINING INVOLVEMENT
You've made an investment in the CERT program and in team members by training them. You can maximize the return on your investment, as well as help advance individual and team skills, by facilitating additional training. Many who finish the basic CERT course will want to maintain and advance their skills. The initial training has sensitized CERT members to potential hazards, to the fact that they may be on their own following a major disaster, and to how they can help their family and neighbors.
You need to maintain this motivation for training by:
- Offering additional training on topics like team leadership, disaster psychology and behavior, decision-making, working with children, working with special populations, etc.
- Offering refresher training on any of the basic CERT units (consider using a local cable channel to broadcast some refresher training).
- Coordinating with the American Red Cross to provide training beyond CERT such as CPR and first aid training.
- Conducting CERT exercises where team members are activated as part of the emergency response.
- Providing specialized training for CERT members such as conducting damage assessment, establishing perimeters, filling sandbags, building flood walls, assisting with evacuation, etc. (In Portland, Oregon, with fire department help CERT members established perimeters around downed power lines following an ice storm. This assistance freed fire department personnel to attend to other imminent hazards requiring their specialized training. In a city in Florida, an emergency manager provided CERT leaders in high rise retirement condominiums with alphanumeric pagers. The manager updated CERT leaders on hurricane conditions and evacuation orders. Once alerted by emergency management about an evacuation, CERT members in turn alert residents in their building and provide information to the emergency manager about the status of the evacuation and potential problems.)
- Establishing projects for CERT volunteers (conducting a Disaster Preparedness Fair with other local organizations at local events; writing, editing, delivering the CERT newsletter; or instructing a small portion of the CERT training).
- Training on ham radios with local clubs.
- Conducting exercise swaps. One CERT can help another with its exercise by acting as victims, assisting in the conducting of the exercise, and helping with the debriefing. In this way two teams benefit from one exercise.
- Having the fire department personnel work with CERT in recruiting more neighbors, selecting staging sites, and improving disaster decision-making skills.
- Conducting incident management practices for individual teams to help them better understand the decision-making and prioritization process. This reinforces what CERT members can and can not do. We want them to work safely with buddies within the scope of their training.
4. RECOGNITION
Volunteers participating in CERT training learn skills that they can apply in a disaster. Helping family and others is the long-term reward for the participant. However, there are other means that CERT organizations use in the short term to recognize CERT volunteer efforts.
- Providing photo identification cards for CERT graduates (these also identify team members to emergency responders when activated).
- Presenting a local or FEMA certificate of completion by the team of instructors and/or local official).
- Presenting graduates with hard-hats and vests.
- Printing graduation pictures in the newspaper.
- Broadcasting the CERT exercise on local TV.
- Having a neighborhood CERT picnic.
- Opening the fire station or city hall for CERT meetings or training.
- Giving CERT pins or baseball caps.
- Setting up a local CERT Internet page.
- Registering CERT graduates as volunteer disaster workers.
- Using stickers on helmets to recognize additional training taken beyond the basic program (ICS class, first aid/CPR, refresher drills, and Ham radio). This is not only recognition but also a means of identifying additional skills a person has acquired.
If you are interested in attending training about working with volunteer, contact your State Emergency Management Training Office to see if they offer the FEMA course "Developing Volunteer Resources".
Are you looking for other CERT related web sites? Check out the one maintained by LA City CERT volunteer at www.CERT-LA.com
Many of these ideas above come from CERT programs operating in California, Washington, Oregon, Florida, and Utah. I want to thank John Moede, LA City Fire Department; Rachel Jacky, Portland Bureau of Fire, Rescue and Emergency Services; and Lt. Frank Lucier, San Francisco Fire Department, for reviewing and contributing to this paper.
Do you have ideas to share? Post them on the CERT Comment form for future dissemination to CERT readers.