In the aftermath of a disaster, Community Emergency Response Team volunteers can help save lives and protect property. Tlingit and Haida’s Generations Southeast Juneau Campus is offering free community emergency response team training beginning April 25.
KTOO’s Morning Edition Host Mike Lane sat down with Mike Lopez, a CERT program liaison in Juneau, to learn more.
Listen:
The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Mike Lane: Mr. Mike Lopez, you are a liaison offering CERT training. What is CERT training?
Mike Lopez: A little bit of history. CERT stands for Community Emergency Response Team. CERT was developed by the LA Department of Fire in 1985. What happened is that they had a major earthquake, and from that major earthquake, it showed that they needed more people to help with the response effort, and they didn’t have enough trained people to respond to it. So that’s where they developed the CERT program. Again, it’s called the Community Emergency Response Team. It’s so then people could be trained to help the community become resilient.
Mike Lane: And now, how do you fit into this?
Mike Lopez: I’ve been involved with cert for approximately 20 years. I have to give credit to the man that introduced me to it, Nick Meacher. He introduced me to CERT over 20 years ago. We were both city employees. He worked for dispatch, and I worked for the hospital, and I did Emergency Management at the hospital, and he, he pulled me into it, and I was addicted to it, man, it’s, it’s because I’m retired Navy, and this is one of my ways that I have to give back to the community.
Mike Lane: So CERT training. When is this going to happen?
Mike Lopez: We have the next scheduled training is going to begin on April 25 and it is approximately 20 hours of training, and it’s going to be held at Southeast generations building as located at the base of hospital drive, and we run it from 9am to 5pm on those days. Most of those sessions are open to the public, so we want as many people as we could get to attend the class.
Mike Lane: So what’s it cost?
Mike Lopez: It’s free training. And that’s, I think that is the best hook that we have. It is free training for you to become more educated. My goal as a liaison for the CERT program here in Juneau is to have more people in Juneau better prepared, and this is one of the tools that we have at our disposal to help people become more prepared.
Mike Lane: So anybody can participate.
Mike Lopez: Anyone can participate.
Mike Lane: And you’re a volunteer, so you do this for free and you’ve been doing this for a long time.
Mike Lopez: Yes, but I’m not alone. I have to give kudos to Alisha Sell and all the other volunteer instructors that partake in this class and instruct the students throughout this class.
Mike Lane: Okay, what is the benefits of having the CERT training?
Mike Lopez: Oh, thank you for asking. For one, you become a great, valuable resource because you are trained, you’re knowledgeable, and all these topics that we give you in the class so you you are not someone that we just pull off the street and say, Hey, you go over there and do this. No, you have the CERT Training under your belt. Responders know our volunteers that wish to respond to calls and stuff like that, they have to wear a vest, they have to wear a helmet, they carry a backpack orders to identify them as active members of our CERT team. So then first responders look at them and they say, Okay, that’s a trained individual. The CERT class is the basic training from here that opens up a window to FEMA training. It opens up windows for Red Cross training. Again, I want to say it’s all free training. And this is the good thing that I like about it, is that we, at the end of the class, will put you through a disaster scenario. So these things that people have learned, they have to demonstrate to us that they know how to do it practical experience. So if you go on our Facebook page, you’ll see some of the pictures from our last disaster exercise, and you’ll see some of the actors that we had. It was pretty gory. The team meets on the third Tuesday of every month at the Fire Training Center and we have training that we go over every month, and then we also have responded to calls, call outs for CERT team to assist. The last assist was for the Red Cross at the Evacuation center at Centennial Hall. We assisted them there. So we are there to assist the fire department if they have a need.
Mike Lane: Again, CERT training, that is the community emergency response team training, and it is coming up on April 25 may 2 and may 9, 9am to 5pm get that CERT training and be ready and help your community stay resilient.
