We all know that living in San Diego is a blessing, but we also are vulnerable to an assortment of possible disasters including earthquakes, wild fires and terrorism acts.  The city of San Diego is served by a wonderful department of Fire Fighters, but the number of fire fighters we have is among the lowest per capita for any large metropolitan area.  With our city in a budget crisis, the fire fighter ratio will not be improved anytime soon.  That means in a major disaster, response times to most areas will be incredibly long.  This was proven out in Hurricane Katrina where many victims were not reached by professional response teams for weeks.   CERT is trained by the San Diego Fire-Rescue Dept to deal with minor fires, perform search and rescue operations and perform minor medical services.  The ideal situation would be to have 1 trained CERT member for every 10 residents.  The current goal in California is to have a 1:25 ratio.  With 35.000 residents in Scripps Ranch, we need to have 1400 residents trained.  Our short-term goal is to get 10 residents trained per SRCA district, which would mean 200 trained residents.  SRCERT currently has 58 trained members, so we still have a way to go just to reach our short-term goal.

Watch this video that was shown at the 2006 National CERT conference that displays what a difference CERT can make.

How do I get trained?   The San Diego Fire-Rescue Department is in charge of the official CERT training program.  Since the city is currently in fiscal crisis, the CERT program is not fully funded by the city and gets a significant amount of funding from grants.  With the limited funds, they have modified the training program.  They are currently using a "fast-tracked" system.  You complete an on-line course that is offered by FEMA .  Then the Fire-Rescue department holds classroom training sessions where you get to do some of the more practical sessions like light fire suppression, medical, cribbing, etc.