Disastrous

I recently finished a two-week Community Emergency Response Training (CERT) class, training for local communities to quickly mobilize in times of disaster, such as floods, earthquakes or terrorist attacks. I wouldn’t ordinarily be very interested in this type of thing. I’ve never had that survivalist mentality, and have always equated being prepared with living a life of fear. Instead, I have chosen to ignore the risks in passive comfort and hope that it would never happen to me. Truth be known, even my presence at the class stemmed from a mistake—I thought it was about family preparedness. But once in, I stuck it out for the entire 16 hours, which proved to be interesting, valuable and impactful.

The CERT program is a child of 9-11. In the aftermath, the president asked citizens and communities to proactively prepare, and placed the general call to action under the aegis of FEMA, which developed the Citizen Corps program. CERT is a fledgling concept and operates very much as a starfish organization (see blog from 1.14.08). Anyone can get certified and establish the program in his/her community. There is no chain of command or centralized structure.

Our instructor was Ken Moravec, whose incredible disaster experiences include working for an unnamed government agency in foreign countries to help prevent nuclear and chemical attacks, time in Iraq during key gas attacks (he had haunting footage), being twice exposed to severe radiation (after one attack, still flying a helicopter 1000 miles), having been shot nine times, assisting the Red Cross in recovery and extraction after a Mexican earthquake, getting stuck on a collapsed freeway in Oakland during the famed 1989 earthquake, volunteering at Katrina, and more. If all this is to be believed, and coupled with his extensive knowledge, his credentials are extraordinary.

It was something of a revelation to me that in most major disasters, public service teams are spread very thin, and often take 3-5 days to reach many neighborhoods. So we were trained (including simulations) in search and rescue, triage, damage control and even creating temporary morgues, as well as disaster preparation and management. It was all quite fascinating. And while I’m not ready to build a bomb shelter in my backyard, I was motivated to take some steps to be more prepared. Further, I’ve been asked to head the efforts in our community, which I agreed to do, although not without reservations.

Final tidbit of more than passing interest: Our house is located a stone’s throw from the Wasatch Fault, which has erupted with a large earthquake every 300-400 years, and is overdue for the next, which could be devastating. Various experts cite the likelihood of a major (Richter 7.5 or higher) Wasatch quake at 25-57% over the next 50-100 years.

Maybe the Boy Scouts are right. It's good to be prepared.