My Newport Cert Expe

My Newport Cert Experience..

RT

On this Saturday morning a group of neighbors from LVH joined with other folks from our community of Newport, South Beach and Lost Creek to experience a kind of graduation ceremony.

We were the first class of this area’s Civilian Emergency Response Team. Today was the day that we put all of our training into play. We had been going to school for months and it was time to find out if we really had learned the lessons or not.

Everybody arrived at the National Guard Armory  Building in Newport around 9am. We were given a review of the points we had learned from the many professionals who had shepparded us through our training. They clearly were anxious for us to succeed and their enthusiasm for the coming exercise was catching.

Soon the moment arrived and we were divided into groups of about 5 or 6. Each group was taken one at a time to the Old City Hall next to the National Guard Armory where our disaster had been brewed. A group would be gone for a half hour or so and then return and then the next group would leave.

Five of us were in the last group. We were Ed Simon, John Spangler, Bill Furgason, Rod McCready and me (Ron Thomas). As we left the building, Toby Cole the Assistant Fire Chief, gathered us together and explained our emergency scenario.

Newport had just experienced a 9.0 earthquake and since our community was ok we all found ourselves at the old city hall where we were told people could be heard yelling for help. A tsunami was eminent. People had been seen wandering aimlessly about the parking lot. Toby explained that he would be our observer/coach and needed us to verbalize what we were thinking as we approached all our problems.


The parking lot then was our staging area and of course it was raining. The first thing we did was to select the leader of our group. Based on his experience as a former police officer we chose Ed Simon. However, each and every one of us had been trained to be the leader because in a real emergency we would not always have the same people available.

Ed began documentation and assigned us into two man teams. From where we stood we could see the building was fed natural gas and a team was dispatched to turn it off. The building had to be surveyed from outside before we could enter and so that took place.  Meanwhile, a young lady wandered on to the seen wanting help .. My first patient. She had a tag around her neck saying she was confused. We talked and we assessed her as ok but needing help. CERT members work rapidly not dwelling on any one patient for very long. Too keep her in place we asked her to stay where she was and yell if the fire truck arrived on scene and she seemed happy to have something to do. We tagged her green.. Within a few steps here comes another one with about the same problem so we made her an honorary Cert and asked if she would help us... Those 2 ladies agreed and we took them to the Triage area where they could help with the injured as we retrieved them.

Ed now assigned Rod McCready and myself as the triage team. Behind us would come Bill Furgason and John Spangler as the rescue team.  Using procedures we had been taught, Rod and I searched every room for victims assessing their level of injury and marking them according their degree of severity then..moving on to the next. Behind us the rescue team was gathering victims and bringing them to the safe triage area for treatment.

As we felt each door for the heat of fire we came upon a victim covered in structural debris. Unfortunately he had no pulse and no breathing.. Marked as “passed on” and move on to the next room. Smoke! We smell smoke. Opening the door we find smoke being created for us by another volunteer and a simulated fire. Working as a team, Rod and I grab a fire extinguisher and put the fire out.

The next room has the Diamond symbol for hazardous material on it. We can’t go in because we have been taught not to go in such places. .. We yell, “Anybody in there??”.  No answer. Move on. We are back in the hall now and hear cries for help coming from the next hall way that we are headed into. We answer, “Emergency Rescue Team .. We’re coming.” Using our through search techniques we will have to search 2 more rooms before we get to the cries for help. As we leave a room we put an x on it to indicate it’s been looked at. It’s like a maze in the dark. Without marking on the rooms you would be doing the same ones over again. Finally we clear the two rooms on our route and find ourselves in a hall blocked with fallen beams with people on the other side calling for help. The damage is beyond our capability to remove. We ask the victims if there is another way in and there is. We will have to come in another door. “We’ll be back we tell them”. Then we make our way back to the safe triage area where Bill and John have been bringing patients and report what we have done and found to Ed Simon... The exercise ended here.

It got to be pretty intense roll playing and had a very real feel about it. We all learned that we need to practice and iron out our procedures. We also learned we can do this and we can do it safely.

There will be another beginning CERT class coming in the future. The plan calls for our first group to help train the next group. So maybe we will see you soon?