GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A first-of-its-kind team that includes ordinary people will now respond to disasters in Grand Rapids.
“[To build] resiliency [in a community], we have to do that through education, training, and having folks that are able to answer the call when needed,” said Allison Farole, the Grand Rapids Emergency Management Administrator.
Farole explains when a disaster strikes, people want to help but a lack of knowledge on how to best do that often creates a second catastrophe. She hopes the city’s first-ever Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) fixes those issues.
It’s a national program that educates volunteers in local cities on disaster preparedness and teaches them fire safety, search and rescue, first aid, and more.
Farole says when an emergency takes place, an area’s professional responders can then rely on CERT’s skills and focus on more complex tasks.
“If we need help distributing water in the community after we have tornadoes or a major storm system, like we did in August, and we don’t have the capacity to distribute things like that, we can call our volunteers to help with that but in a coordinate fashion,” said Farole.
Since the program’s launch in 1993, it’s trained more than 600,000 people in 2,700 communities across the country.
Sixteen volunteers make up CERT’s inaugural class in Grand Rapids. They went through eight weeks of curriculum then passed two, mandatory online courses from FEMA.
Members can chose when to respond to a disaster. A federal grant makes the program free.
“We’ve had COVID, we’ve had riots, we’ve had severe weather - A lot of stuff has happened and I think folks are just ready to learn and to really get anything they can to build their skillset, to be more prepared,” said Farole.
Farole expects the number of CERT members to grow. She says their current wait list for the program includes 100 people and calls it a testament to the desire to help.
“There’s been case studies showing when companies, organizations, and individuals actually practice the training that we go through, or the actions that we say we’re going to do, the more our brains are able to say, ‘Ok, this is happening, this is what we need to do and know what to do,’ in a very calm fashion,” said Farole.
Click here to apply for Grand Rapids CERT.
