The Atascadero Community Emergency Response Team is offering its second 24-hour disaster preparedness course of the year at the Colony Park Community Center.
The CERT Basic Training Course will teach attendees, who are 18 and older, basic disaster response skills to safely help themselves and those around them, because in the event of a major wildfire, earthquake, or widespread flooding, emergency crews may not always be readily available.
“We don’t do the technical things; we don’t have the experience, or the training, or the equipment to do that, but we can support them logistically,” said San Luis Obispo County CERT President and Executive Director John Spooner. “We can manage traffic at one of their incidents; we can move equipment for them…there are a lot of things that we can do that relieve firefighters of the little mundane things, and then they can go work on the technical aspects.”
Students will learn basic First Aid, about the psychology of disaster, how to extinguish small fires, how to search structures and rescue victims, and how to protect their home against disasters.
A big focus in the course will be flooding, because Spooner says. With the most powerful El Niño event in years arriving in California, residents need to get ready now.
“We have to understand the enemy,” he said. “El Niño is going to produce an extreme amount of rain, so we, we’re going to have creek, stream, and river flooding, we’re gonna have coastal flooding along the shoreline, and there is gonna be, most likely, property destruction, and I hope none, but may see some fatalities out of this too.”
The program is split up into five different sessions. The first one starts on Oct. 6, and the fifth and final one, ending on Oct. 17, will have students participating in a real-life review and disaster scenario.
Spooner says people who have completed the training have responded to major flooding, tsunami watches, searches for missing persons, and have been involved in traffic and crowd management, emergency radio, and disaster recovery efforts.
Completion of all training sessions is required to receive FEMA certification.
The course is $40 for Atascadero residents, and $42 for non-residents.
You can register online or in person at the front desk of Colony Park Community Center, Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. For questions, call (805) 470-3360.
