Pathways to Healing

by Elaine Zablocki

CERT Training Prepares Us to Cope with Emergencies and Help Others

Some evenings we turn on the news and see people coping with an unexpected disaster: a tornado, fire, flood, or earthquake. One aspect of a healthy life is learning how to cope with these emergencies if they ever strike the place where we live.

In a disaster, people spontaneously want to help their neighbors. The first hour after the initial trauma is critical in saving people’s lives, and in a major disaster, it’s impossible for professional “first responders” to reach everyone. However, if someone doesn’t have any training, their spontaneous efforts could be ineffective. After a disaster, enthusiastic volunteers may even put themselves in danger, because they’ve never learned how to enter a damaged building with appropriate precautions.

Because of this, many cities now offer training for Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT). Nancy A. Colfer, DC, of the Colfer Chiropractic Wellness Center in Eugene, Oregon, enrolled in her local CERT training program three years ago. “I first heard about CERT from one of my patients, who was quite enthusiastic and involved,” she says. “I found the program very empowering, and at the time sobering. It means you take time to think about the potential for disaster in your locality, and the fact that you will likely be on your own for at least a short period of time. After you’ve done this training you know more about what to do in those situations. Actually, that was sobering too, because with education comes responsibility.”

Typically, the CERT training program involves a series of classes, followed by a mock disaster drill where participants get to put their skills into practice using volunteers and mannequins to simulate victims. Each participant receives a bag of supplies that includes a hard hat, protective gloves and eyeglasses, and a yellow vest that identifies them as a trained volunteer.

CERT is offered by local emergency management departments, and by major employers who set up on-site training programs for their employees. Those who want to learn more about CERT skills without actually enrolling in a class could download the CERT manual and watch training videos on online. However, the classes offer an exceptional opportunity for hands-on practice

with support from experienced trainers.

A substantial portion of the CERT training includes health-related issues such as how to identify people who need help most urgently, and how to improvise needed equipment from whatever’s available (using plastic wrap and cardboard to make an effective splint, for example).

Other sections of the training explain how to safely search a house for people who may be in trouble. The first step: size up the area for potential dangers, such as dangling electric wires or shaky walls. People learn to work in teams, to systematically go through a building, and record what they’ve found so that others don’t have to duplicate their work.

In another exercise, the CERT trainees work together to extricate someone who’s trapped in a car. “My health-care training came in handy then,” Colfer recalls. “As a chiropractor I have a good sense of the mechanics involved in moving a person safely. I was at the head of the trapped person (represented by a mannequin) while someone else was at the far end. We looked at each other, and we both said, ‘We can do this, let’s try!’ The firemen who were training us said, “Yay! You guys did it!” We were the first group to complete that exercise.

Common Sense Disaster Planning

Geoffrey Simmons, MD, a physician with specialized training in internal medicine and disaster medicine, and a CERT Regional Trainer, has written a very useful manual, Common Sense and Disaster Preparedness: A Quick Guide For Staying Safe Before, During and After Any Disaster.

The book is organized into sections on preparing before a disaster, how to cope during a disaster, and what to do after a disaster. “Many of the previous books on this subject were missing essential pieces of information, in my opinion,” Simmons says. “They tend to be strong on preparation, but very few talked about what to do during an event, and even fewer talked about what to do afterwards. I tackled all three.”

Common Sense and Disaster Preparedness starts with a valuable summary of critical action steps and (just as important) critical “don’ts.” “Don’t count on first responders arriving fast enough. It might take them hours, days, even weeks to come to your aid,” Simmons writes. “Don’t count on stores being open. … Don’t ignore a non-functioning stoplight, treat it as a four-way stop sign. … Don’t go near a downed power line.” A special section on medical emergencies includes tips on how nonmedical people should deal with life-threatening injuries during a disaster.

Before, During, and After

Standard recommendations say that everyone should have at least a three-day supply of food and water on hand for all family members. Everyone needs to adapt that advice to their own family’s situation. “An older lady with a dog has very different needs from a family with two kids. Babies need special supplies,” Simmons notes. “Anyone with a medical condition needs to think about keeping an extra supply of medicine on hand, and where to go if they need essential medical services such as dialysis.”

We start out by stocking supplies at home. However, problems can also arise when people are at work and school. “We have to consider all scenarios, because emergencies like tornadoes and earthquakes come unannounced,” Simmons says. “You probably can’t have a 72-hour kit stored at your office, but extra bottled water and a few energy bars could make a big difference in extreme situations.” The Red Cross recommends making a plan ahead of time on how to reconnect if the family is separated (and making sure all family members know the plan.) For example, it may be easiest to text or call an out-of-town friend or relative when local phone lines are overloaded.

People ought to visualize in advance what they would during certain disasters. This doesn’t mean being paranoid and thinking about every single thing that might go wrong. If you’re in a place that is vulnerable to earthquakes or hurricanes or tornados, you need to have some idea of practical steps to protect yourself.

“The example of the tsunami in Indonesia shows how information is critical,” Simmons says.

“When the ocean pulled back some people ran out in that direction; it was one of the dumbest things you could do. People need to know what kind of crises are most likely to hit wherever they are, and just know the sensible thing to do.”

After an emergency is over, there may be a long period of picking up the pieces and slowly restoring services. The most important thing is to have enough water on hand, and Simmons’s book includes tips on how to disinfect or filter or purify questionable water. Most healthy adults can go 72 hours or longer without food, he says, “while children, pregnant women, senior citizens and those who are ill will need to eat more often. When storing food think high calorie, nonperishable, and portable.” If your home is unsafe, you may need to go to a shelter, so think about what you would want to take with you in that situation.

“CERT is a worthwhile program for all sorts of people,” Colfer says. “The training includes so many different skills. Of course there will be some aspects where we feel confident and other parts where our personal skills may be limited. However, it is so valuable just to understand what it takes for you and your family to be prepared, and to understand the general processes that would be used if a disaster ever does strike. CERT training gives us a basic grounding.”

Resources

Common Sense and Disaster Preparedness: A Quick Guide For Staying Safe Before, During and After Any Disaster, by Geoffrey Simmons, MD, CERT Regional Trainer. For short excerpts from the book, and to order a copy, go to: http://www.commonsenseanddisasterpreparedness.com The spiral bound, back-pocket version costs $39.95, including plastic storage bags for the book and for important documents. Simmons reports that a lower-cost edition and a Kindle version will be available soon.

To download the CERT training manual, go to: http://www.citizencorps.gov/cert/training_mat.shtm.

CERT training videos are available online, on topics including “Safety in the After-Disaster Environment,” “Fire Safety,” and “Head-to-Toe Assessment.” Go to http://www.fema.gov/video-materials.

For advice on preparing an emergency kit, plus one-page fact sheets on a wide range of specific disasters, go to http://www.redcross.org/prepare and click on “Preparedness Fast Facts.”

Elaine Zablocki has been a freelance health-care journalist for more than 20 years. She was the editor of Alternative Medicine Business News and CHRF News Files. She writes regularly for many health-care publications.