CERTifiable

Our city offers a class to residents known as CERT. That stands for Community Emergency Response Team. The class is offered each spring, and for a couple of years Matt has seen the ads for the class and wanted to sign up, but never has. This year when we found out it was being offered we both signed up.

I had the idea that the class would teach us first aid and other important emergency information. Not Quite. The purpose of the class is to teach regular Joes how to deal with extreme situations so we can help out if asked to, but the information was a lot more basic than I expected it to be. We briefly covered basic first aid. We did get to put out a fire (Matt was way more excited about that than I was).

We attended class one night a week for 7 weeks, and really by week 3 I was already getting tired of going to class. But we persevered and made it through all the weeks. Then at the end we were given our official hats and vests and our awesome certificate! (Woo Hoo… ) We did get to participate in a mock disaster on the last night of class. A bunch of the kids in the neighborhood got all dressed up in fake wounds (they looked pretty good, wish I had taken a picture). We had to go in the building and assess them and get them out of the building and get them first aid. It was kind of fun (probably wasn’t supposed to be. I am sure I was not taking it seriously enough).

Overall – I am glad that I am now officially on the list to help if needed, but I don’t know if the time spent in that class actually got me anything – except a nice hard hat and a green vest.