CERT Training, Let’s Try This Draft Again
Ship week for the big magazine is not the week to get my seriousness on and write a comprehensive, brief paragraph about disaster. It began so well, but clearly I will need to start over:
Emergency Responses to Emergency Situations
This has been the year of earthquakes (I suppose technically last year was the year, and this is just the year adjacent), but the devastation of regions like Haiti, Pakistan, and New Zealand should be the impetus that everyone in LA needs to get prepared for a natural disaster.
I took CERT classes a year and a half ago, and they simultaneously made me a) scared to leave my house and b) overly confident in my ability to carry a wrench at all times and survive the zombie apocalypse. The truth is somewhere in the middle, but preparing yourself for disaster is always a good thing.
CERT classes are:
1. Free
2. A great way to engage in your local community (Your neighborhood battalion will see your presence as a sign of civic engagement and recruit you).
3. A potential gateway to hot firefighters (sometimes they teach the classes. If you take class at the firehouse in Culver City, sometimes they will also open the front door when they are waiting for fires and emergencies because they are polite that way. And also they have to open the door when you ring the bell instead of going through the back way like you should).
4. The road to a snazzy green flashlight and hard hat (you have to complete your course, but then, the fashion riot is all yours)
5. A way to learn what those triage tarps mean (you don’t really want to know. Okay, that’s not true, but you will be a little surprised and then you will watch medical dramas with a totally professional eye and yell out, “Put him on the orange tarp! Sharpie that puppy!”)
CERT classes will help you come up with a better survival strategy than, “Grab the cats and the shotgun, put the cats in a bag, put the shotgun on your shoulder.” This is a bad plan for urban dwellers. Cats are wily. They will take over the city infrastructure. Shotguns are unpredictable, although good for zombie attacks.
