Town Crier staff writer and photographer Ellie Van Houtte chronicles her Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training in Los Altos Hills. Following is the fourth in her six-part series.
When I first learned of CERT, I didn’t understand the language of emergency response – I felt as if I were surrounded by foreign voices on a crowded bus in a distant land. However, after observing a few drills as a reporter and working my way through training classes, the cacophony of the unfamiliar is fading away.
There’s a universal process that applies to nearly every element of emergency response. Search and rescue is one such skill that follows a methodical routine. When CERT volunteers arrive on the scene of an incident – whether a home, commercial building or other site – they perform a quick “sizeup” to determine where to start and how to proceed.
After developing a plan, CERT partners patrol the site to identify hazards and determine if further search is needed. We are instructed to exercise good judgment when assessing damage – for example, you should never enter a collapsed or heavily damaged building and should proceed with extreme caution if there is even lightly damaged infrastructure.
If a space is deemed safe, rescue efforts continue with an interior room-to-room search to locate victims and hazards. As volunteers proceed through a site, they leave notes on doors in a common design to reveal their findings, enabling secondary CERT teams or emergency responders to pick up where they leave off and vice versa. Altering the plan is sometimes the best option, especially if your safety is at risk.
The unpredictable
Even with clearly outlined methods, some elements of a crisis situation are particularly unpredictable, especially the emotional impact traumatic experiences may have on victims.
With mental and physical health inextricably linked, CERT members learn psychological first aid to help ease the emotional impact of trauma. Key to dealing with such victims is never to assume how someone is feeling or what they are thinking. Responses to trauma vary, depending on the circumstances and the individual’s personal coping mechanisms. Although addressing medical needs may save a life, listening to a victim is equally important in a crisis scenario.
To help others during an emergency, I must first ensure that I’m on stable footing. Am I well rested and hydrated? Is the trauma around me affecting my emotional state? Training to identify the common emotional impacts of trauma exposure is important, but awareness of the residual effects is equally relevant.
Debriefing
CERT members learn how Critical Incident Stress Debriefings can alleviate the stress and shock that the adrenaline rush may overshadow in the first hours or days after an emergency. Taking time to reflect on the experience as a community may reduce chances of developing post-traumatic stress disorder or other afflictions.
When time and resources are limited, simple steps can make everything from search-and-rescue operations to medical treatments more manageable. Even with a cache of techniques and methods in our heads, improvisation and creativity may be the most important tools in our kit.
As CERT instructor Mike Sanders reminded us many times during our drills, “There’s really no wrong way as long as you don’t hurt someone.”
Van Houtte’s report on her fifth week of CERT training is scheduled to appear in next week’s Town Crier.
