Keith Damron learned long ago how
quickly danger can turn to disaster.
Damron, an Eastern
Michigan communication and theater arts professor, and
his then-fiancée were
at her parents' house one evening when they noticed dark
smoke rolling out of her brother's room. They went inside
and found a fan had short-circuited and melted to the chair
it was sitting on. While his fiancée woke her brother
and sisters and got them out of the house, Damron grabbed
a rug, threw it over the flaming chair and fan, and carried
the burning items out into the street. He suffered second-degree
burns, but knows how much worse it could have been.
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A HELPING HAND: Members of Eastern Michigan
University's Community Emergency Response Team
(CERT) tend to "injured" students during training
conducted by EMU's Department of Public Safety
this
past summer. The CERT program trains citizens
to
respond to emergency situations until professional
responders arrive on the scene. |
"It really drove home the point of how precarious things
could be with regard to fire safety," he said. "Fortunately
we were able to catch it, but I looked at that and realized
things can happen in a flash."
And when they do, knowing how to respond can save lives.
In late June, the EMU Department of Public Safety ran
a three-day Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training
for 24 EMU faculty and staff from departments across the
university. Each 24-member class that completes the training
makes the campus community that much better off in the
event of a major emergency.
"We've incorporated it into Eastern's emergency response
plan," said Kathryn Wilhoff, EMU's director of health and
safety. "We
would like to use (CERT members) to help us be better prepared...It's
making sure the building's occupants are getting trained
and aware. If we have a fire in this building, for example,
do we know what to do? And if we do have an emergency,
there are more hands and arms and legs to help DPS out."
The CERT Program is part of Citizen Corps, which is coordinated
by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The CERT program
trains citizens in fire safety, light search and rescue,
team organization and basic first aid, so they can help
others in a major disaster until professional responders
arrive. Many of EMU's pilot CERT trainees — including
Damron — also are members of the university's
incident management committee.
"I took volunteering for the committee very seriously," he
said. "CERT training appealed to that on a whole new level.
I found it fascinating, and it sounded like fun. It's a
level of involvement at the university where I could
make a difference in another way besides teaching."
Trainees learn how to read a fire and assess how it's
affecting a structure. They put out fires with extinguishers,
learn how to find injured people, guide them to safety
and triage the wounded.
At the end of the three-day course, participants conducted
a search-and-rescue simulation in a residence hall, where
about 10 student actors, some "injured," had to
be rescued from the blacked-out building.
The Department of Public Safety will use feedback from
the pilot group to tailor future CERT training and refresher
training, Wilhoff said. She hopes to train three or four
groups a year.
"They're geared up. They're excited," she said. "They
want more training. It's kind of nice to have a three-day
training and, at the end, having people say "We
want more. Can we do more simulations?'"
CERT training doesn't require waiting around for a disaster.
Customer service representative Mary Morris and two of
her colleagues from the College of Business put their CERT
training to work back at the office, where they mapped
every fire extinguisher and pull station in the five-story
Gary M. Owen Building.
Morris said she has been recommending the training to
everyone she talks to, and the COB hopes to eventually
have at least two CERT-trained persons on each floor.
"It was a lot less intimidating than I thought it would
be. I think a lot of people were thinking it was going
to be too scary or overwhelming," Morris said. "There's
a lot of humor and a lot of interesting things that make
it easy to sit through. We all felt like we gained confidence
in how to stay calm and prepared in an emergency. It's
totally critical that you feel like you can stay calm and
know that these are the steps to take."
To learn more, go to http://www.citizencorps.gov/cert/
