Community Emergency Response Team Training at CHC

Publish Date: Nov. 17, 2022

Crafton Hills College partnered with the City of Yucaipa Office of Emergency Services to provide Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training at the campus Oct 19-21. CERT is a program that prepares attendees to help themselves, their family, their neighbors, and in this case, the Crafton Hills College community in the event of a disaster.

The training is important to our community since emergency service personnel will not be able to reach everyone immediately following a major event. CERT groups are known and trusted resources to emergency responders and their communities and members of CERT are counted on to respond to disasters, participate in drills, exercises, and city events.

Twenty CHC employees and two community members participated in the 2 ½ day training. The leadership and training team included CHC employees, Mike Strong, Larry Cook, Paul Walker, Dan Word, Evan Sternard, and representatives from the City of Yucaipa, David Avila, Chris Markarian, and Trevor Benson. On the final day of training, nine students and staff volunteered to be survivors allowing the CERT trainees an opportunity to practice basic disaster response, fire safety, search and rescue, team organization, and disaster medical operations.