Published: November 06, 2009 11:06 am      

City looks for resident rescuers

The hurricane that tore through New Orleans five years ago demonstrated the need for more rescuers when disaster strikes.

Now, Joshua Fire Marshal Glen Hargrove is looking to help protect his city with a program designed to train citizens how to help, instead of hinder, first emergency responders.

“After the hurricanes they figured out they wouldn’t have enough to rescuers to handle a situation the magnitude of New Orleans,” he said. “We’ll use Community Emergency Response Team people to train others that can get you can goods, flashlights, batteries, first aid kits, drinking water enough to substantiate your existence or your family for three days where you’re at. Hopefully, before three days, rescue people would be able to get to you.”

The program was created by the Los Angeles City Fire Department in 1985 as a way to prepare for California’s earthquakes, giving residents the ability to help both themselves and others and become auxiliary responders.

“You can kind of tailor the training to the type of people that you have. If you have a substantial amount of nurses, then it’s probably going to be geared more towards the medical assistance, if you end up with a lot of construction worker types, it may be geared more towards rescue,” Hargrove said. “It’s kind of a live process as we go through it, and we can adapt it to the skills of the volunteers.”

The North East Texas Council of Governments helped establish the program and will furnish a trainer. At this time, Hargrove is contacting those who expressed interest in the program to determine a training schedule that would fit with the most people, and those who miss the first session would be called for the second.

“Everybody will get some basic traffic control, first aid, search and rescue type training, and we will also use those people to train people in Joshua,” he said. “One of the big efforts you’ll hear as we go forward is sheltering-in-place.”

To “shelter-in-place” is to take shelter wherever someone may be following a warning siren or signal from local authorities, according to the Centers for Disease Control Web site.

During a disaster, either natural or terroristic, those who have completed the course could be called on to assist rescue workers in searching for people and delivering supplies. Certified CERT members are equipped with pliers, duct tape, a helmet, flashlight and other things inside a backpack that identifies them to emergency responders.

“At this point in time we hope to be able to furnish their initial CERT set up, the helmet, vest, backpack, if they want to expand into other modules of the CERT program we would be allowed to provide some additional equipment if they wanted to,” Hargrove said.

After the courses, a staged-scenario serves as a training ground so responders have a good idea of what to expect.

“You go through the classroom and at some point after that we’ll have some sort of staged disaster so you can get them close to the real thing,” he said. “This really helps them use the skills now and get some hands on experience.”

Those interested can contact Hargrove at 817-558-7447 to ask about meeting dates.