County offers CERT program
Community Emergency Response Teams, or CERT, is a critical program in the effort to engage everyone in America in making their communities safer, more prepared, and more resilient when incidents occur. These courses will begin in Jefferson County beginning Nov. 1.
Basic skills are taught in the areas of disaster preparedness, fire safety, disaster medical operations, terrorism preparedness and crime prevention, disaster psychology and more. All students participate in a final exercise at the end of the course.
Classes are from 6 to 9 p.m. Class dates are subject to change due to instructor scheduling or weather conditions.
Tuesday, Nov. 1: Disaster Preparedness
Thursday, Nov. 3: Disaster Medical Ops I
Tuesday, Nov. 8: Disaster Medical Ops II
Thursday, Nov. 10: Fire Safety and Fire Simulation
Tuesday, Nov. 29: Disaster Mental Health; Animals in Disaster; and People with Special Needs
Thursday, Dec. 1: Light Search and Rescue
Tuesday, Dec. 13: Crime Prevention and Terrorism Awareness
Thursday, Dec. 15: CERT Volunteerism, Test, Final Exercise and Graduation
Classes will be held at the Jefferson County Emergency Communications Center, 28 Industrial Blvd., Kearneysville.
All classes are taught by professionals in the corresponding field of expertise and are taught at no charge to participants.
All who complete all sessions and the final exercise will receive a certificate of participation and be issued a hard hat, and a CERT Vest. Any participant that does not attend all courses or that is late or leaves early will have to make up that section of the course when the next round of courses are offered.
Pre-registration is necessary and can be done by calling Terri Mehling at 728-3329 to request a participant form or email to tmehling@jeffersoncountywv.org. You can also find the CERT Training Form as well as additional information by visiting www.jeffersoncountywv.org/government/departments/homeland- security/cert-2.html.