TRAINING FOR A DISASTER!

April 2017

My niece, Jessica and I signed up for CERT TRAINING and we showed up week after week learning how to be a Certified Emergency Response Team. We learned how to assess damage to a building and whether or not to go in and rescue people, we learned how to assess a persons degree of injury, and how to provide medical to help to those in need. We learned how to get a heavy refrigerator off of someone even though we aren't strong enough to lift it by ourselves, we are learning how to extinguish fires, etc..  It's been fun and informative but we still have to finish our program at a MOCK DISASTER in a few weeks. We hear it's hard and scary and kind of gruesome. We have to show competency in all we have learned. We are both a little nervous!

I am so glad I got to do this with Jessica. I'm glad she'll be my partner during our MOCK DISASTER and I hope if an EARTHQUAKE or any other DISASTER happens, she'll be right by me!!

 Ok, so the first night we had to put on our gear was a joke! Seriously, we laughed because our helmets kept sliding over our eyes, our goggles kept fogging up and our masks would get us claustrophic...ok maybe not Jessica's but mine sure did! How will I ever help someone with all of these problems?  I will definitely have to fix my helmet before I do this again!

 Jessica showing off her too big work gloves!

 Here is our fake refrigerator and we are putting wedges underneath to prop it up and off this boy.

                                                                 Great job Jessica!

Then we had to try different ways to lift people up and carry them out of a building.
We still have a few weeks left to learn and practice and I'm sure we'll be feeling all comfortable with running in a rescuing everyone...NOT! But it's our hope to be of some assistance if and when a DISASTER strikes. This knowledge will hopefully help us to be more calm in the face of disaster and we won't be helpless. We will be more PREPARED!