Clermont County CERT

About Clermont County CERT
The Clermont County Community Emergency Response Team (Clermont County CERT) helps residents of Clermont County and the tri-state area to be better prepared to respond to emergency situations in their individual communities.

When emergencies happen, Clermont County CERT members can provide critical support prior to the arrival of first responders, provide immediate assistance to victims, and organize spontaneous volunteers at a disaster site in their community.

We are an organization of CERT-trained individuals that desire to continue involvement in CERT preparedness and training. We hold regularly scheduled meetings with a technical presentation that focuses on either building new skills or enhancing existing skills. The technical presentation of Clermont County CERT meetings is open to any tri-state area CERT member. The business meeting will focus on Clermont County CERT members from Clermont County.

The Need
Each year, many Ohio communities are rocked by severe weather, such as tornadoes, floods or flash floods, winter storms, or by “man made” disasters. The damage caused by such disasters effect everyone. Disasters can severely restrict and overwhelm emergency response resources, communications, transportation and utilities; and can leave individuals and neighborhoods cut off from outside emergency support

CERT members are trained to take care of themselves and then help others in their communities for the first three days following a disaster. This is when debris-clogged or damaged roads, disrupted communications, or high volume of calls may prevent access by emergency response personnel. The purpose of CERT training is to provide citizens with the basic skills required to handle virtually all their own needs and then to be able to respond to their communities’ needs in the aftermath of a disaster.
It is important to remember that the best sources of help in emergencies are professional responders. However, in situations when they are not immediately available, people will want to act and help. We have seen this time and again in our history. CERT training teaches skills that people can use to safely help while waiting for responders. The alternate is to do nothing and that is not in our nature.

CERT Training in Ohio:
More than 45 of Ohio’s 88 counties have conducted CERT training. Some counties with urban areas such as Franklin, Cuyahoga, Hamilton, and Montgomery have multiple independent programs that are tied together through county Citizen Corps Councils.

Since the beginning of the program in 2003 under a FEMA CERT grant, Ohio’s programs have reported training over 8,000 CERT members and 475 CERT instructors (through the Ohio EMA-sponsored Train-the-Instructor course). These numbers do not capture training done by unfunded programs.

Continuing education for interested CERT alumni includes, but is not limited to: ICS, NIMS, advanced first aid, CPR, damage assessment, EOC operations, shelter operations, Volunteer Reception Center training, donations management, disaster drills and exercises, train-the-trainer, etc.

Many programs have newsletters and hold regular meetings. Most are registered on the FEMA State Directory at http://www.citizencorps.gov/citizenCorps/certsByState.do This directory is in the process of being updated to provide more detailed information about each program.

CERT Involvement in Disasters:
Some citizens who take the CERT training do so for their own personal awareness and the safety of their home and family. Others are motivated to be involved more closely with public safety and volunteerism in their communities. Non-emergency volunteer opportunities include distributing safety information at community events, and assisting with projects conducted by local fire/rescue and law enforcement departments.

The severe winter weather, ice storms, and flooding that affected much of Ohio in December 2004 and January 2005 prompted many active CERT members to get involved in their communities’ response and recovery efforts.

Defiance County: CERT volunteers relieved fire and rescue personnel in doing door-to-door notifications of shelter locations and flood impact. They also helped with sandbagging operations and assisting residents to remove property from flooded basements.
Delaware County: CERT-trained volunteers with 4x4’s provided transportation to hospital staff and Red Cross volunteers. Also assisted with debris removal after ice storms crippled areas on the border of Huron and Richland counties.
Auglaize County: CERT team members involved in damage assessment, manning phones in the EOC, debris removal, checking on elderly and isolated individuals, and shelter operations.
Fairfield County: Newly trained CERT members assisted with debris removal.
Coshocton County: Assistance with shelter operations, coordination of evacuations.
Medina and Tuscarawas counties: Staffing EOC phones.
City of Whitehall (Franklin County): Shelter operations, evacuation of elderly from homes with no heat, delivering oxygen and firewood, and checking on residents per requests from concerned relatives.
Clark County: CERT members traveled two counties away to assist with mutual aid to Logan County, helping the elderly and disabled with debris removal left from the storms.

Summer 2006 severe weather and flooding also saw CERT and Citizen Corps volunteers helping with clean-up, establishing Volunteer Reception Centers, and assisting response and recovery coordination efforts as support and community relations staff.