Street Captain Description.
In Four Seasons, we call a fully trained and equipped Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) volunteer a “Street Captain”.
Street Captain CERT training occurs quarterly in Hemet. It is 20 hours duration on a Friday evening and a full day Saturday and Sunday. It is free. The CERT program educates volunteers about disaster preparedness for the hazards that may impact their area and trains them in basic disaster response skills, such as fire safety, light search and rescue, team organization, and disaster medical operations. CERT offers a consistent, nationwide, FEMA sponsored, approach to volunteer training and organization that professional first-responders can rely on during disaster situations, which allows them to focus on more complex tasks when they arrive. We are told they will not arrive quickly. In the meantime, we’re on our own. Through CERT, the capabilities to prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters is built and enhanced. Upon training completion, you will be awarded a certificate plus a basic CERT go kit including a bag, vest, hard-hat with a CERT logo, and more. The training will better equip you to protect yourself, your family, and your Four Seasons neighbors. Again, it’s free.
The additional equipment needed is an inexpensive two-way walkie-talkie radio.
Throughout the year, at occasional meetings, Street Captains are asked to participate in training exercises where we practice our response to a theoretical disaster.
The qualifications for Street Captain, are mobility to move house to house for about a half-mile, sight sufficient to get a drivers license, English-speaking, and reasonable health. We take all comers, rich-man, poor-man, beggar-man, thief. Okay, scratch thief.
CERT Auxiliary
A CERT auxiliary is a disaster day only volunteer. These auxiliaries agree to report for duty on the day of a disaster. They don’t participate in training or practice as do Street Captains. They agree to be responsive to text or other communication on the day of a disaster, report to a predetermined location, dressed properly, and work under the guidance of a trained Street Captain. They may serve as a scribe, survey the area for Help Needed signs, record the nature of the help needed, help with extricating a victim to a safe place to await EMS, comforting victims, transporting victims and/or equipment, or other duties. Many volunteers will use the skills they learned throughout prior life, heavy equipment operator, fireman, nurse, social worker, carpenter, and so on. Everyone can help…even you. They are crucial to our response at Four Seasons.
No CERT volunteer, Street Captain or Auxiliary, will be required to do something they feel uncomfortable with.
You Can Make a Difference
Become a brother or sister in our elite community where we look out for you and yours in times of disaster and expect the same in return.
Become a CERT volunteer. Register here. Do it now!