CERT

I finished my CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) training class last night. We had our disaster simulation exercise and it was very interesting, and a lot of fun. We were in a warehouse and had a drama club from a local high school act as the disaster victims. They had been all bloodied up and were moaning and screaming and did a really great job of acting like they were hurt and in shock. I was on the rescue team and had some catching up to do since I missed that class while I was in Texas. I’ve never been in a disaster and it gave me a lot of things to think about.

I took the class because it was something to do outside of my comfort zone and I would like to be able to keep my head about me and help my family and neighbors in a disaster.  I didn’t study the information in the book as well as I could have although I do have it now for a resource. But I came away from the class with a couple things. First, I have an outline of a plan to get myself a little better prepared for an emergency and I want to sit down with my family and make sure we all get better prepared. And second, I won’t be any use to anybody doing medical triage or search and rescue. :) Even the sight of fake blood makes me a little queasy and I don’t deal so well with panic. So I’ll be working on clean up or somewhere else away from the bodies in the event of a disaster. And that’s ok. Better to work with my strengths and leave the other things to people better able to handle it. So all in all, it was a good experience and I learned some valuable things.

Now I’m trying to think of what I might want to do next. I genuinely like learning and trying new things.