Maple Valley Fire and Life Safety is about to graduate its latest class of Community Emergency Response Team members this week.

These community members are the latest group to participate in the seven week long disaster preparedness course that raises awareness, teaches disaster assessment skills and helps students gain confidence so they can react productively and responsibly during a disaster situation.

According to Janine Johnson, public education specialist for the Maple Valley Fire department, there are “170 CERT members, five captains and 17 HAM radio operators.” “Our 2009-2 class graduates this Thursday evening at station 81,” Johnson said in an e-mail. “The class will take everything they have learned for the past seven weeks and put their talents to work in a disaster simulation. We will have patients moulaged and screaming.”

During the course of the seven week class, students learn about basic disaster preparedness, the principles of triage, patient assessment, how to diagnose and treat airway obstructions, bleeding and shock, as well as how to deal with fires, some basic search and rescue techniques as well as disaster psychology.

Once these members have graduated, they are put on the department’s CERT map, then assigned to a CERT captain based on where on they map grid they are located.

“When a disaster does occur, the CERT Members will report damage and injures to their captain and their captain will report the information to myself (CERT Leader) or the EOC,” Johnson explained. “They will be using the same incident command system the firefighters use. There are only 15-17 firefighters on duty each day and there are 50,000 people in and out of the Maple Valley area during the day.”

Having community members on the CERT team provides a critical support system to Maple Valley’s first responders.

“The firefighters want to be there for our citizens right away, but just won’t be able to,” Johnson said. “It is truly going to be neighbors helping neighbors. It is our community that we need to count on to help following a disaster so it makes perfect sense to train them.”