This is the website for Wyandotte County Kansas Community Emergency
Response Team. WYCO CERT is under the direction of the Kansas City KS / Wyandotte County Department of Emergency Management.
Team activations will be done through the Emergency Management Department and members must be able to sustain themselves
for 72 hour operational deployments.
Each year communities across Kansas fall victim to some type
of disaster whether it be in the form of severe wind and thunderstorms, tornados, blizzards, floods, droughts, heat waves
or man made and technological disasters. The damage caused by disasters effects all elements of society and government.
Catastrophic
events severely restrict and often overwhelm emergency response resources, communications, transportation and utilities. In
addition, they leave many individuals and neighborhoods cut off from outside support. When we hear about this or see it on
the news, it always seems to be happening to someone else, but what if this happened to you are you prepared and ready to
respond.
Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT) are trained to help communities mitigate disasters during
the first minutes and up to 72 hours or in some cases weeks following a disaster when damaged roads, disrupted communications,
high call volume, etc., may restrict access by local police, fire and emergency medical services. The purpose of CERT training
is to provide citizens with the basic skills that they will need to handle their own needs and then to respond to their communities’
needs in the aftermath of a disaster.
What does the course involve? The basic CERT
course consists of 24 - 27 hours of training, usually conducted over 9 weeks, one night a week for 3 hours. Classes are
taught by trained emergency personnel, including firefighters, law enforcement officers, paramedics and Emergency Management
individuals.
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