CERT Basic Training Unit 1: Disaster Preparedness
Course Curriculum and Overview
Program Identification and Sponsorship:
Administered through the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program under the auspices of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Designed to train individuals in basic disaster response skills to support communities during critical periods following catastrophic incidents.
Comprehensive Course Sequence:
Unit 1: Disaster Preparedness
Unit 2: CERT Organization
Unit 3: Disaster Medical Operations, Part 1
Unit 4: Disaster Medical Operations, Part 2
Unit 5: Disaster Psychology
Unit 6: Fire Safety and Utility Controls
Unit 7: Light Search and Rescue Operations
Unit 8: Terrorism and CERT
Foundational Unit Learning Objectives:
Describe the primary functions of CERT, discuss the role of the CERT volunteer, and explain how CERT integrates into a community's emergency preparedness structure.
Identify and describe the categories of hazards most likely to affect local communities, including their direct consequences on human lives, public health, and local infrastructure.
Equip volunteers and their families for potential local emergencies through the establishment of personal readiness protocols, structured family disaster plans, and disaster supply kits.
Foundational Capabilities and Roles of CERT
Core Operational Capabilities:
Assisting Emergency Services Personnel: Deploying in support of emergency responders when requested, strictly adhering to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) defined by the sponsoring agency and bounded by specific areas of training.
Assuming Response Functions: Fulfilling secondary and support emergency functions immediately following a major event when professional responders are not yet on scene.
Promoting Community Resilience: Educating and preparing households and neighborhood units prior to the onset of disaster conditions, ensuring rapid mutual aid among neighbors when primary response units are delayed or unavailable.
Non-Disaster Support Roles in the Community:
Identifying and checking on vulnerable neighbors or coworkers who may require specialized physical, functional, or medical assistance.
Distributing educational disaster preparedness literature and conducting practical demonstrations for neighborhood groups and civic organizations.
Staffing first aid stations and basic care booths at local public gatherings and special events.
Assisting local fire agencies with community residential smoke alarm installation initiatives.
Assisting municipal personnel with parade route management, route monitoring, and perimeter safety.
Team Building and Planning Dynamics (Exercise 1.1):
Objective: Work collaboratively in groups of individuals to engineer and construct a freestanding structural tower reaching a minimum vertical elevation of measuring from the ground base to the uppermost tip.
Procedural Phases:
Phase 1 (Planning): Devote exactly exclusively to ideation, architectural design, and operational consensus. Participants are strictly forbidden from touching or manipulating any building materials during this stage.
Phase 2 (Execution): Upon formal authorization, conduct physical assembly and stabilization within a strict construction window, yielding a combined total exercise run time of .
Community Preparedness Roles and the Whole Community Approach
Collective Preparedness Principles:
Readiness serves as a universal mandate across jurisdictions of all scales throughout the Nation to mitigate physical impact, life loss, and economic devastation.
Comprehensive efficacy necessitates tailored alignment with the unique physical, cultural, and environmental attributes of the local operational area.
Engaging the Whole Community:
The Whole Community preparedness paradigm mobilizes the full capacity of social institutions, private enterprises, non-governmental organizations, and individual citizens.
Interpersonal bonds and community networks serve as the primary operational infrastructure for community resilience, enabling rapid societal recovery.
Community coalitions function as the organizational vehicle uniting grassroots initiatives with formal civic governance.
Government Responsibilities:
Formulating, validating, exercising, and continuously updating comprehensive multi-agency emergency operations documentation.
Ensuring professional first responders receive appropriate vocational training, high-grade life-safety equipment, and logistical resources.
Delivering emergency warning broadcasts, direct protection protocols, and coordinated disaster recovery relief to the public.
The Emergency Operations Plan (EOP):
Acts as the master regulatory document that aligns and synchronizes all public sector entities possessing designated operational mandates prior to, during, and after emergencies.
Assigns concrete operational responsibilities and operational expectations to specified agencies, organizational divisions, and key personnel.
Establishes clear, unbroken hierarchical lines of authority and decision-making chains.
Delineates tactical procedures for the systematic protection of life, municipal property, and critical resources.
Catalogs inventory, staging areas, staging facilities, emergency supplies, apparatus, and specialized workforce assets.
Community Leaders' Obligations:
Serving actively on local collaborative emergency planning councils alongside public safety executives.
Identifying non-governmental and private capabilities within their sectors to bridge planning gaps and incorporate them into formal government disaster response frameworks.
Ensuring the complete internal readiness of facilities, on-site personnel, physical infrastructure, and the client populations they directly serve.
The Public's Civic Responsibilities:
Familiarizing themselves thoroughly with local alerting platforms, siren warnings, primary evacuation corridors, and designated assembly points.
Enrolling in personal safety, first aid, and community emergency response curricula.
Routinely validating personal evacuation routes and domestic shelter-in-place plans through practical household drills.
Establishing community communication trees and mutual aid pacts with neighbors.
Channeling actionable feedback to civic administrators to refine local emergency policies.
Maintaining vigilance and promptly reporting suspicious activity or developing hazards to appropriate authorities.
Volunteering with recognized local response auxiliaries and training cohorts.
Hazard Vulnerability and Disaster Classification
Core Defining Elements of Disasters:
Sudden Unpredictability: Events occur with minimal to zero actionable warning time.
Resource Depletion: Initial incident demands instantly overwhelm local emergency personnel and equipment capacities.
Pervasive Threat: Severe immediate hazards endanger human lives, public health, structural stability, and ecological balance.
Hazard Typologies:
Natural Hazards: Earthquakes, wildfires, riverine and flash floods, extreme heat waves, hurricanes, landslides, severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and severe winter storms.
Technological & Accidental Hazards: Hazardous materials (HAZMAT) releases, chemical transit spills, industrial pipeline explosions, and commercial nuclear power generation accidents.
Terrorism Incidents: Deliberate hostile actions deploying Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, or Explosive (CBRNE) weapons systems.
Local Hazard Vulnerability Assessments:
Determining the statistical frequency of historical catastrophic events native to the immediate geographical region.
Ranking potential hazards based on severity indices, lethality, and destruction potential.
Pinpointing localized geographical vulnerabilities, including low-lying flood basins, fault zones, heavily forested wildland-urban interfaces (WUI), and industrial chemical transit corridors.
Anticipating cascading community impacts triggered by prolonged systemic disruptions to electricity, clean water, communications, and transport networks.
Critical Infrastructure Prioritization During Overload:
Law Enforcement: Concentrates solely on resolving severe threats to public safety, major civil unrest, and violent crisis points.
Fire Services: Directs apparatus and personnel exclusively toward the containment and suppression of major multi-structure conflagrations.
Emergency Medical Services (EMS): Allocates field assets strictly toward triaging and transporting individuals suffering from immediately life-threatening trauma.
Structural Typology Vulnerabilities:
Surviving individuals are bound to whatever building footprint they occupy at the precise moment disaster conditions manifest.
Professionally engineered, code-compliant structures maintain superior performance and survival margins across almost all hazard vectors.
Damage dynamics vary radically based on framing materials: unreinforced masonry (URM), light wood-frame, concrete tilt-up, and structural steel experience unique failure modes.
Substantial mitigation and egress differences exist between isolated single-family detached homes and high-density, multi-unit residential or commercial high-rises.
Residential Hazard Mitigation and Home Fortification
Common Interior Residential Hazards:
Ruptured natural gas utility lines caused by unsecured water heaters, ranges, and clothes dryers toppling during structural movement, soil shifting, or high winds.
Impact trauma inflicted by tumbling bookcases, unrestrained top-heavy shelving, falling ceiling fixtures, and unsecured dishes from opened cabinets.
Electrical shocks, crush injuries, and pathway obstruction from unanchored heavy appliances and office workstations.
Secondary fire ignitions sparked by severed in-wall wiring, overloaded splitters, or frayed power lines.
Structural Mitigation Measures:
Bolting wood sill plates firmly into continuous concrete foundation slabs using heavy-duty anchor bolts.
Reinforcing roof-to-wall framing junctions with steel trusses, hurricane ties, or structural metal straps.
Securing exterior propane storage cylinders, fuel tanks, and masonry chimneys with corrosion-resistant tension strapping.
Anchoring manufactured mobile homes to ground tie-down systems and reinforced concrete pads.
Elevating main breaker panels, water heating hardware, and air handling equipment above calculated base flood elevations.
Engineering and constructing an interior hardened safe room or storm shelter built to FEMA wind-resistance guidelines.
Non-Structural Mitigation Measures:
Securing bookcases, filing cabinets, and heavy furniture firmly to wall studs utilizing heavy-duty L-brackets or nylon straps.
Fastening home electronics, kitchen appliances, and desktop computers to stable counters with industrial hook-and-loop fasteners or mechanical clips.
Installing positive-latching childproof or seismic safety catches on all overhead cabinet doors.
Clearly identifying, tagging, and displaying laminated operation instructions at all gas, water, and main electrical breaker shut-off valves.
Securing water heaters with dual metal straps anchored to wall studs, and retrofitting rigid connections with flexible corrugated stainless steel gas lines.
Mounting permanent impact-rated storm shutters over exterior window panes.
Hazard-Specific Fortification Strategies:
Structure Fire Egress: Equipping security bars and locking assemblies on exterior window exits with quick-release levers readily operable from the inside without keys or specialized tools.
Landslide / Earth Movement Zones: Installing flexible utility couplings and segmented service conduit designed to deform without shearing during lateral earth displacement.
Wildfire Defensible Space:
Eliminating combustible wooden shakes or untreated shingles in favor of Class-A fire-rated roof cladding.
Establishing a continuous defensible buffer by eliminating all flammable vegetation, dry leaf litter, and brush outward to a minimum perimeter of surrounding the primary structure.
Severing and stripping all climbing ivy and dead vegetation from vertical exterior walls.
Financial Mitigation: Maintaining comprehensive homeowners or renters casualty coverage, supplemented with dedicated National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) policies when situated within or adjacent to designated flood zones.
Personal, Family, and Workplace Preparedness Planning
Family Disaster Planning Requirements:
Designate explicit primary and secondary meeting points: one directly proximate to the residence (e.g., a specific streetlamp or neighbor's porch) and one centralized public location outside the immediate neighborhood (e.g., a community center, library, or park).
Establish an out-of-state emergency check-in contact person; regional phone switches often jam following localized disasters, whereas long-distance trunk lines and SMS text routing typically maintain superior survivability.
Formulate distinct operational contingency branches for:
Sheltering-in-place.
Extended home confinement.
Immediate forced vehicular or pedestrian evacuation.
Map out primary and multiple secondary escape pathways out of residential dwellings, workplace settings, academic facilities, and places of worship.
Identify multiple vehicular evacuation corridors leaving the immediate district, accounting for primary road closures and structural bridge failures.
Verify household transportation reliability and fuel reserve maintenance.
Subject the established household plan to unannounced operational drills at regular intervals.
Special Population Considerations:
Integrate explicit accommodations for children, including school emergency release authorizations, reunifications points, and specialized comfort supplies.
Account comprehensively for individuals presenting Access and Functional Needs (AFN), securing uninterrupted power for life-sustaining medical equipment, accessible transit options, and surplus consumable medical supplies.
Prepare animal evacuation procedures, crates, leashes, vaccination records, and food stocks for household pets and service animals.
Emergency Escape Planning Protocols:
Ensure all family members, occupants, and commercial coworkers possess identical comprehension of the primary and alternate floor-level egress paths.
Execute recurring practice escape drills across varying simulated environmental conditions (e.g., darkness, simulated smoke blocking primary exits).
Scenario-Based Emergency Decision-Making (Exercise 1.2):
Evaluation of dynamic real-world scenarios to prioritize immediate actions and rapidly pack critical survival assets within restricted time frames.
Emergency Disaster Supply Kits:
Gather emergency survival supplies in advance; retail acquisition is impossible once panic surges and stores lose electrical power or run out of stock.
Pre-stage dedicated, portable kits across multiple day-to-day transit hubs: inside the home, in personal vehicle trunks, and at the workplace.
Leverage existing household items into centralized storage containers, rotating consumable foodstuffs and updating fresh water reserves semi-annually.
Protective Actions and Sheltering Strategies
Immediate Field Protective Actions:
Situational Appraisal: Rapidly scan ambient surroundings for active secondary hazards (downed electrical distribution lines, pooling fuel, leaning structures).
Stay or Evacuate Decision: Determine instantaneously whether internal conditions offer higher survivability than traversing dynamic external hazards—a decisive initial survival pivot.
Respiratory Preservation: Rapidly move toward uncontaminated air pockets; shield breathing zones against pulverized drywall, silica, soot, and chemical particulates using particulate filters or damp cloths.
Physical Armor & Signalling: Take cover beneath rigid load-bearing surfaces to protect vital organs from falling masonry; if trapped under debris, signal periodically against structural pipes or wall studs using metal implements or whistles rather than vocal shouting to conserve oxygen and prevent dust inhalation.
Decontamination: Promptly remove surface contaminants from exposed skin and clothing using clean runoff water or sanitary wipes.
Field Hygiene Maintenance: Enforce rigorous sanitation, hand-washing, or alcohol disinfection practices to prevent secondary gastrointestinal and communicable disease outbreaks in damaged field environments.
Sheltering Modalities:
Shelter-in-Place (Sealing the Room):
Executed during airborne chemical, biological, or radiological release emergencies.
Identify an above-ground interior room lacking exterior-facing windows and exhibiting the fewest possible door openings.
Seal all perimeter entry points, air conditioning vents, exhaust grilles, and electrical outlets utilizing plastic sheeting and duct tape.
Operational duration typically spans several hours until the airborne hazard plume naturally dilutes or disperses downwind.
Extended Stay Sheltering:
Executed during extensive infrastructure collapses, severe winter blizzards, or catastrophic utility blackouts.
Designed to sustain isolated residential occupants safely for several days up to an operational ceiling of .
Demands robust caches of non-perishable food, water reserves calculated at a baseline of per individual per day, redundant lighting, thermal gear, and sanitation supplies.
Mass Care or Community Sheltering:
Operated within designated public facilities (high school gymnasiums, community halls) managed by municipal agencies or humanitarian organizations.
Requires evacuating persons to bring personal emergency go-bags containing a minimum of a supply of medications, essential identity paperwork, comfort supplies, and clothing, while the hosting facility supplies basic caloric meals, hydration, and bedding.
CERT Organization, Operational Standards, and PPE
Post-Disaster Response Mandates:
Triaging and stabilizing life-threatening injuries (severe bleeding, airway compromise, shock) prior to professional emergency medical intervention.
Providing emotional first aid and supportive psychological stabilization to disaster victims encountering trauma and acute operational stress.
Locating, assessing, and shutting off damaged domestic utilities (gas, electricity, water) strictly when safe and tactfully indicated.
Suppressing small incipient-stage fires utilizing portable fire extinguishers or basic hose lines.
Executing systematic, light search and rescue operations in moderately damaged or non-complex architectural structures.
Incident Command Integration and Organizational Structure:
CERT units operate directly under the organizational principles of the Incident Command System (ICS) to ensure functional communication, safety oversight, and manageable spans of control.
Government Agency Liaison: Interfaces directly between the local emergency operations management hierarchy (Fire/Rescue, Police) and field volunteer leadership.
Team Leader (TL): Manages all team tactical operations, directs safety protocols, and allocates incoming tasks across functional sections.
Operations Section Chief: Directs field execution teams, supervising three specialized branches:
Fire Suppression Team
Search & Rescue Team
Medical Team
Planning Section Chief: Manages strategic situational intelligence, supported by two specialized elements:
Documentation Unit
Incident Status Unit
Logistics Section Chief: Coordinates tools, medical caches, communication gear, staging facilities, hydration, and equipment maintenance.
Administration Section Chief: Manages personnel accountability, incident expenditure records, and volunteer operational hours tracking.
Mandatory Personal Protective Equipment (PPE):
Helmet: High-visibility, impact-resistant industrial hard hat to safeguard cranium against falling overhead structural components.
Goggles: Impact-resistant, fully vented safety goggles providing comprehensive optical seal against airborne debris and chemical splatters.
N95 Mask: Certified particulate respirator worn to prevent internal inhalation of toxic dust, pulverised drywall, soot, and pathogens.
Gloves: Dual-layer defense system featuring heavy-duty leather/work gloves to handle abrasive debris, broken glass, and structural timber, combined with non-latex examination gloves for sanitary medical interventions.
Footwear: Sturdy, puncture-resistant work boots or rigid safety shoes featuring reinforced ankle support and non-slip tread.
Gear Storage: Dedicated backpack or response kit containing flashlights, safety gear, and specialized response equipment.
Legal Frameworks, Advanced Training, and Practicum Assignments
Statutory Liability Protections for CERT Volunteers:
"Good Samaritan" Laws: State-level statutes sheltering non-negligent individuals rendering uncompensated, good-faith emergency aid at incident sites.
Volunteer Protection Act of 1997: Federal statutory framework providing broad civil liability protection to volunteers acting within the legitimate scope of their assigned duties inside a non-profit or government entity, provided conduct does not involve gross negligence or willful misconduct.
State-Specific Emergency Worker Statutes: Localized legislative protections legally designating activated CERT volunteers as affiliated civil defense or municipal disaster service workers under declared emergency conditions.
Continuing Education and Specialized CERT Training Pathways:
Advanced Disaster First Aid and Triage Protocols
Management of Animal Issues and Veterinary Considerations in Disasters
Automated External Defibrillator (AED) Operations and Field Defibrillation
Community Outreach and Cross-Cultural Disaster Communications
Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) Professional Skills
Structural Shoring, Cribbing, and Debris Removal Operations
Mass Care Logistics and Donations Management
Mass Sheltering Setup, Intake, and Operations
Special Needs, Access, and Functional Accommodations
Traffic Control, Flow Staging, and Perimeter Crowd Management
Advanced Commercial and Residential Utilities Control
FEMA Emergency Management Institute (EMI) Independent Study Online Courses
Unit 1 Practical Homework Assignments:
Review all technical reference text, hazard matrices, and checklists contained within Unit 1 of the official Participant Manual.
Read, analyze, and familiarize oneself with the organizational hierarchies, span-of-control rules, and operational layouts in Unit 2: CERT Organization.
Convene household discussions to finalize an actionable domestic disaster plan, including the designated out-of-state check-in point of contact.
Commence structural stocking and distribution of disaster supply kits across home, automotive, and work environments.
Perform a physical safety audit across the primary residence to isolate mechanical, structural, and electrical hazards, initiating corrective non-structural mitigations.