Community Emergency Response Training

Disasters can severely restrict and overwhelm emergency response resources, communications, transportation and utilities and can leave individuals and entire neighborhoods cut off from outside emergency support. The City is offering CERT courses to train people to take care of themselves and then to help others in their communities for the first three days following a disaster. The purpose of CERT training is to provide citizens with the basic skills required to handle virtually all of their own needs and then to be able to respond to their communities’ needs in the aftermath of a disaster.

The CERT course consists of 25 hours of training, and will be conducted at Santa Barbara City Fire Station 1, 121 W. Carrillo Street. The classes are Thursday evenings from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm, April 5th through May 17th, 2012. The course will end with a disaster exercise on Saturday May 19, 2012, where the class will utilize the skills they’ve learned in the program.

The course agenda includes disaster preparedness, fire safety and suppression, disaster medical operations-assessment and treatment, light search and rescue operations, CERT organization, disaster psychology and terrorism overview. The course is as much hands on as it is classroom so the participants are kept active and interested.

Anyone interested in participating in this training should call the City’s Office of Emergency Services at (805) 564-5711or e-mail Yolanda McGlinchey, Emergency Services Manager, at ymcglinchey@santabarbaraca.gov for a registration form and informational flyer. Applications and class flyer can also be downloaded at www.santabarbaraca.gov/oes.