Purpose
Teen CERT is a training program that prepares you to help yourself, your family, and your school in the event of a disaster. During an incident, emergency service personnel may not be able to reach everyone right away. By getting trained in Teen CERT, you will have the skills to help emergency responders, save lives, and protect property. As a member of a Teen CERT team, you can respond to disasters, participate in drills and exercises, and take additional training.
Volunteer Abilities
Under the direction of school and local emergency responders, Teen CERT teams help provide critical support by giving immediate assistance to victims, providing damage assessment information, and organizing other volunteers at a disaster site. Teen volunteers trained in CERT also offer a potential workforce for performing duties such as shelter support, crowd control, and evacuation. The role of a Teen CERT volunteer is to help others until trained emergency personnel arrive.
Team Building
In addition to supporting emergency responders during a disaster, the Teen CERT program builds strong working relationships between emergency responders and the people they serve. Teen CERT teams also help the school year-round by helping with safety issues in the school, peer mentoring, emergency management exercises, preparedness outreach, fire safety education, and home safety.
Benefits of Teen CERT Training
Teen CERT training takes about 20 hours to complete and provides critical skills in emergency preparedness and response.
Participants learn how to:
- Apply basic medical techniques.
- Assist emergency responders.
- Conduct light search and rescue.
- Extinguish small fires.
- Help reduce survivor stress.
- Identify and anticipate hazards.
- Reduce fire hazards in the home and workplace.
- Set up medical treatment areas.