Citizen response team helps out when disasters tax first responder resources

By Morgan Rothborne, Ashland.news 

Ashland residents have an upcoming training opportunity to learn how to help rather than hinder during a disaster. To properly prepare, potential volunteers will be treated to an immersive disaster scenario complete with “victims” in make-up. 

Those who complete the training can become volunteers with Ashland Fire & Rescue’s Community Emergency Response Team. That team can help not only first responders in the event of a disaster, but themselves and everyone around them. 

“To allow people to assist themselves, to make sure they are more resilient and prepared in their home and around their neighborhood and, in the event of a large-scale disaster when first responders are overwhelmed because there aren’t enough of them, then citizens can step in and augment that response. … We don’t go fight the fire, they don’t let us get into harm’s way, but there’s a lot we can do” said Paul Collins, longtime Community Emergency Response Team volunteer. 

Training begins from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m Friday, Oct. 18, picking up again from 8 a.m to 5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 19, with a one-hour lunch break. 

Training concludes the following weekend with a session from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 25, and a final session from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 26. The finale of the training will include the “victims” in make-up to resemble injuries. 

“We give them (attendees) a scenario that there’s been an event that we’re responding to as a team. … There’s a couple of scenarios where our team goes in and tries to do the most good for the most people,” Collins said. 

Throughout the four sessions, attendees will learn skills such as some emergency medicine, including stopping heavy bleeding, two-way radio communication, “light” search and rescue, and the Incident Command System that organizes all first responder’s work from police to wildland firefighters. 

To become a CERT volunteer through the training, attending all four exercises is required, but anyone is welcome to attend simply for curiosity’s sake, said Sydney Jenkins, fire and life safety specialist with Ashland Fire & Rescue and one of the organizers for Ashland’s CERT team. 

CERT volunteers could make the difference in a disaster when first responders might otherwise be taxed beyond their means, such as the continual threat of an evacuation due to wildfire, Collins said.

“When we see the fire coming over the hill and we have some hours to sort that out. The neighborhood closest, we know the police are going to get them out, but the neighborhoods further away we know we’ve got a little more time, we can get a CERT team in and go door-to-door,” he said.

Tabitha Viner, also a CERT volunteer, said she and others were deployed during the Almeda Fire working to ensure evacuation was complete in the Quiet Village neighborhood next to the ignition point where volunteers also searched for embers and possible additional fire starts. 

The CERT program is national and governed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but Ashland’s program can trace its roots back to the 1997 flood, Collins said. Many people wanted to help, but with no mechanism to organize them they couldn’t respond to that disaster. 

Willing but untrained helpers can make a disaster worse, he said, remembering that after a severe earthquake in Mexico City, many of the victims of the event were volunteers attempting to help in the rubble. 

More willing “victims” are needed for the disaster scenario and CERT itself needs more volunteers. The program has around 100 members signed up, but only around 40 actively participating. To fulfill its full function around 60 would be ideal, Jenkins said. 

“We have a role for everybody and their capabilities, but aging out is a factor,” Collins said. 

To keep the program alive, people from all walks of life need to be continuously joining and learning. Reggie Windam said that, for her, volunteering meant learning the incident command response system, allowing her to feel capable in a new way and enjoying the thoughtful support of AF&R staff, as well as fellow volunteers. 

“I have grown psychologically and emotionally around these people here,” she said. 

Beyond a disaster, CERT forms an auxiliary for Ashland’s small but mighty first responders with the new Rapid Activation Team (RAT). 

 Ashland Police Department has four officers and a supervisor on a given shift “on a good day,” Janken said. When fully staffed, Ashland Fire & Rescue has 10 firefighters, two engines and four ambulances available per shift. These resources could be limited by a single house fire. 

“Say we have a typical structure fire, it hasn’t taken out a whole neighborhood. But we take up a lot of the road, traffic control, firefighter rehab. We might need help securing the scene for an investigation, …. More things that are needed than in a disaster,” Jenkins said. 

Firefighters can become consumed with their work, enough to not notice their own vital signs until they injure themselves and potentially creating an additional problem for their fellow firefighters, Viner said. In their role performing firefighter rehab, volunteers bring them water and snacks, help them take off their gear, change their tanks if need be, and are trained to take vitals and assess their condition to prevent them from overworking themselves. 

With the RAT team fulfilling these kinds of roles, more first responders can remain available for additional incidents and better respond overall. But the RAT team is still very new and has only two fully trained members, Jenkins said. 

CERT has also become the exclusive source of Ashland’s “WRAP” program volunteers. The Wildfire Risk Assessment Program provides free assessments of homes at the request of Ashland residents. By filling the program with trained CERT volunteers, it’s possible to offer something more holistic such as additional evacuation and disaster preparation information. 

“Just because you prepared your space doesn’t mean you won’t have to evacuate,” Jenkins said. 

Those who take CERT training can perform the equivalence of fire hardening on their properties within themselves as the skills they learn empower them to respond to an emergency rather than be caught off guard by it. 

“The more people that have taken it (training) the better we are, even if they’re not on the team. We need people, we need you to be there for your community,” Collins said. 

To learn more about the training and other opportunities to get involved with CERT, visit ashlandcert.org. To volunteer as a victim for the training exercise, call Ashland Fire & Rescue at 541-482-2770.

Email Ashland.news reporter Morgan Rothborne at [email protected].