Community Corner
CERT Stays Prepared Under Pressure
The monthly practice scenarios keep volunteers ready to respond to emergent situations in Agoura Hills.
A massive earthquake has hit Agoura Hills. Search and Rescue volunteers have been deployed to a home located just off Reyes Adobe Road north of Thousand Oaks Boulevard. Mannequins and live victims are hidden throughout the house. "Stay this close," says the evening's leader Kevin Austin, pulling two of his CERT members by their shirt sleeves, until they are nearly shoulder to shoulder.
It is all part of a monthly drill for Agoura Hills volunteer force known as CERT Disaster Response Team. To stay prepared and in practice, the Search and Rescue volunteers conduct these exercises, each with a different scenario. This month, the drill is in response to an imagined earthquake that registers 7.0 on the Richter scale.
Part of CERT, Search and Rescue and the Disaster Response Team are made up of self-organized local residents trained by the city and county. In the immediate wake of a natural disaster or terrorist attack, local resources are typically overwhelmed, leaving people to take care of and organize themselves until help can arrive. At that point, these volunteers become instrumental.
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This month, the team is conducting an exterior observation, then entering at 6:30pm, finding the missing persons, and discerning serious injuries from minor ones. Once removed from the residence, victims will be grouped according to the gravity of their injuries.
Their practices are determined by a national standard used by all Urban Search and Rescue teams.
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"There are certain protocols and standards," explained team member Gary Bail, a workers compensation consultant in his real life, and an active member of CERT.
Bail said that in a search situation, a particular emphasis is placed on speed and efficiency. The team must identify the scope of medical need, tag a victim, and move on.
Victims are classified and then tagged with tape that the Search and Rescue volunteers carry with them. Red tape is immediate need for medical care, yellow is less urgent, and green is walking wounded. Depending on a "green" victim's injury and mental state, he or she may be recruited to help direct the search efforts. This can be a good role for child victims, who like to help, and benefit from keeping their minds off the fear and shock of a disaster.
"It's urgent that they do what they can to keep moving," Bail said. "Once they stop to treat one person, they're no longer effective, and the search falls apart."
The teams make sweeps through the house to identify victims, remove and group each by tape color on the lawn. After reviewing how best to respond to the injuries and discussing how well each team performed inside the home, Kevin Austin wraps up the evening.
"We learned a lot," he tells his teammates. "This was a good one."