If you鈥檙e a fan of ER or Third Watch, there鈥檚 an opportunity to play a role in real life emergencies on the 91探花campus. This summer a group of staff members will be trained as members of the 91探花Campus Emergency Response Team, or CERT.
CERT is a national training program sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but it is designed for communities, not for universities. The 91探花is one of only three universities that either has a program or is developing one.
鈥淭he task of adapting a community module to a campus module I think is really interesting,鈥� said Joshua Curtis, the program coordinator. 鈥淭he campus is like a city so it has its own hazards and unique ways of doing things.鈥�
This summer, the University plans to train 25 to 30 staff members to be members of the team. The training, which begins June 15, requires a three-hour commitment once a week for nine weeks. The training includes basic first aid, fire safety and light search and rescue strategies, among other things.
Curtis is a graduate student in urban planning who worked in disaster mitigation when he was in the Peace Corps. He鈥檚 coordinating the training under the supervision of Steve Charvat, the UW鈥檚 director of emergency management, but he won鈥檛 be doing all the teaching.
鈥淲e have a wealth of expertise on campus that we plan to draw from for the training,鈥� Curtis said. 鈥淲e鈥檒l have different teachers for each of the sessions.鈥�
Some of the training will be in the classroom, but some of it is hands-on. The class will have the opportunity, for example, to put out a real fire. And for the last session, a disaster simulation will be held in a building at Sand Point.
Assuming all goes well, this summer鈥檚 training will be just the beginning at the University. 鈥淓ventually, we鈥檇 like to have a CERT team in every building on campus,鈥� Curtis said. He said training sessions could be held three to four times a year, perhaps on a more concentrated schedule than the one this summer.
Anyone interested in either the upcoming CERT training or future ones should contact Curtis, joshua3@u.washington.edu.