Karla Rendon
Editor in Chief
Approximately 30 people hoping to better understand how to handle emergency situations attended the Community Emergency Response Team course April 7 in the President’s Dining Room.
Community Emergency Response Team, better known as CERT, is a free seven-week course offered at the University for which participants learned how to take care of themselves, others in the wake of a disaster or emergency.
The course covers earthquake preparedness, fire safety, flood survival techniques and other emergencies that can occur.
“I expect to learn how to work in a team and how to handle situations when it comes to rescuing people and how to handle other different types of natural disasters such as flooding and landslides,” senior biology major Armando Anchondo said.
The course provided binders full of information to students in the course, as well as a slideshow providing photographs of natural disasters that have occurred in the Los Angeles county.
“I plan on going into the medical field in my future, and feel like this would be a good way to prepare for that,” Anchondo said.
He said he took these classes because he felt that it is important to know how to be ready for a natural disaster and how to handle them when in that situation.
“I learned a lot about equipment to have on hand. I learned a lot about preparedness with just this first course, and I learned all the examples of earthquakes and landslides that have happened in Los Angeles in the past, so that was a good eye-opener of what to expect,” Anchondo said.
The course was implemented by the Los Angeles Fire Department and is an all-hazard and all-risk class designed to prepare community members over the age of 18 for disasters while conventional emergency services help others.
The CERT program is a 21-hour curriculum that covers basic medical operations, including triage and treatment of injuries.
Alicia Mejia, community services representative for the County of Los Angeles Fire Department, hopes students taking the course will learn how to care for themselves, their neighbors and others in the wake of a tragedy because officials may not reach individuals immediately following a disaster.
“I still think an earthquake is more probable than any other natural disaster (in La Verne),” Mejia said.
“The professional first responders have priorities, and they may take a while to respond to your individual homes,” she said.
“Without sounding too abrupt, they won’t be there right away. They have to triage and make reports prior to responding to individual homes.”
Alex Soto, director of risk management, agreed with Mejia on stressing the fact that officials may not be able to respond to each individual immediately following a disaster.
“That is the biggest reason why we here at the University of La Verne have elected to pursue the CERT program; to help us be better prepared and to help us address potentially life-threatening matters on our own, realizing it could potentially be days until we have professional responders,” Soto said.
Students interested in taking CERT courses should contact Mejia at alicia.mejia@fire.lacounty.gov to make arrangements for missing the first and second class.
Karla Rendon can be reached at karla.rendon@laverne.edu.
