On Sept. 22, 2018 CERT members from around the city gathered at Frank Hotchkin Memorial Training Center to experience the Central Bureau CERT Refresher.
The day began with a welcoming from our new CERT Commander, Capt 1 Cody Weireter and Deputy Chief, Philip Fligiel of Operations Central Bureau followed by Central Bureau CERT Coordinator, Carolyn Burleson.
As CERT, knowing that we will be there to assist the whole community in a disaster, we called upon Richard Pope, Director of the Los Angeles Department on Disabilities who gave a very informative talk and answered questions about how to assist persons with disabilities and others with access and functional needs.
We then broke up into teams to do skills rotations, practicing head-to-toe assessments, heavy lifting and bandaging and splinting. To make it realistic, we had to respond using only what we brought with us in our CERT packs or whatever we could find lying around.
Finally, we brought it all together in a disaster simulation where a vehicle ploughed through the crowd leaving many of our CERT members injured and in need of rescue. In this mass casualty incident, we had to quickly establish incident command, locate treatment areas, rescue, triage and treat our victims.
There were many new CERT members who had their first experience responding to an MCI. They learned proper techniques as well as what equipment they would need for such an incident.
