FIRST RESPONSE

Initial Impact

How big is the emergency? How long before professional responders can arrive? Who responds when professional first responders are delayed? Problems with untrained and unorganized volunteers

How BIG is the emergency?

How large an area is affected?

What level of damage? Apartment buildings? Shopping centers? Office buildings? Residential areas? How do you know?

How long before professional first responders arrive?

Professional responders in your immediate area will first be dispatched to the areas with the highest concentration of casualties.

Apartment buildings, shopping centers, office buildings, hospitals, schools.

Secondary units will be deployed from other areas

County Command Center will start deploying equipment and resources from other areas as scope of damage becomes known. This minimizes response in other areas to normal occurrences. Mutual aid companies from outside the county are moved into depleted areas and supplement first-responders in impacted area.

How Long Before They Get To YOU?

It could be hours or days.

Determining the extent of damage could take many hours.

Reports from ground filter in slowly Reports from air over-flights when available All are needed to determine exact and total scope of destruction.

Confusion Panic Anxiety

Untrained Volunteers
People will naturally want to help.

But untrained volunteers can hinder rescue efforts and/or become casualties themselves.

Who in your community

Can safely Search and Rescue? Can perform first aid, CPR to the victims? Can inspect damaged homes from the outside, turn off gas, etc.? Can save professional responders precious time by indicating the status of structures already searched? Can supervise untrained volunteers to assist and react safely?

Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT)

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, using the model created by the Los Angeles City Fire Department, began promoting nationwide use of the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) concept in 1994. CERT training promotes a partnering effort between emergency services and the people that they serve. The goal is for emergency personnel to train members of neighborhoods, community organizations, or workplaces in basic response skills. CERT members are then integrated into the emergency response capability for their area. If a disastrous event overwhelms or delays the communitys professional response, CERT members can assist others by applying the basic response and organizational skills that they learned during training. These skills can help save and sustain lives following a disaster until help arrives.

CERT Training

Training is designed to cover: First Aid, CPR, Disaster Preparedness, Fire Safety and Suppression, Disaster Medical Operations Triage and Treating Life Threatening Injuries, Disaster Medical Assessment, Treatment and Hygiene; Light Search and Rescue; Team Organization; Disaster Psychology; Terrorism and CERT philosophy and procedures.

Integration into first-response

CERT follows the National Incident Command Structure.

CERT members are trained to respond in emergencies when NO OTHER professional firstresponder are on-site, however they hand-off all operations once professionals arrive and then integrate and react with them as requested.

Emergency Preparedness is
EVERYONES Responsibility

Form, Support and FUND a CERT team in your area.

To form a CERT unit in your area contact

The Prince Georges County Department Of Emergency Management

6/5/2012 Presented by the Berwyn Heights Emergency Management Committee 14