GREAT FALLS — A three-day training course began on Wednesday for the Cascade County Community Emergency Response Team (CERT).
The CERT Program teaches people how to better prepare themselves for hazards that may affect their communities.
Since 1993, the program has trained the public in basic disaster response skills, such as team organization, disaster medical operations, fire safety, and search and rescue.
The Cascade County CERT Program began in 2005 when the first class of volunteers were trained and certified.
The ability for these Community Emergency Response Teams to perform these actions frees up professional emergency responders to focus their efforts on more complex and critical tasks.
“If there’s something that happens and there’s no other first responder there, we at least have some basic knowledge to help ourselves and help our neighbors and after that, we’re able to, if the community or if the community agencies, like the fire department or the county require us, then we can help out the community in bigger ways, but first and foremost is learning to help yourself and help your neighbors in an emergency,” explained Jenny Watson, President of the Cascade County CERT.
Cascade County offers this basic training course periodically, and their monthly meetings are open to the public. For more information, call Watson at 406-403-1454, the CERT office at 454-6900, click here for the Facebook page, or email cascadecert@outlook.com.
Interview from March 2020:
