Cobb’s Emergency Management Agency offers training in response to community disasters

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A shield with drawings representing different disasters, tornado, lightning, flood, fire

Posted By: Larry Felton Johnson August 12, 2023

Are you prepared to jump to the aid of your community in the case of a disaster?

The Cobb County Emergency Management Agency posted the following article about a great opportunity for emergency response training, so that if a flood, or a fire, or any other emergency befalls your community, you can play a positive role.

Cobb County’s Emergency Management Agency is ready to train the next Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) members.

Cobb EMA  will offer 24 hours of FREE training designed to prepare individuals to be ready for possible disasters. Once they complete training, Cobb EMA will include the new CERT members in future opportunities to help the community.

The training happens on three consecutive Saturdays from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. each day.  Dates with remaining availability include:

             September 9, 16, & 23

          October 14, 21, & 28

          November 4, 11, & 18

Each Saturday is a different topic; potential CERT members must complete all three classes. Attendees who cannot make the three consecutive classes will have the opportunity to finish later.

To learn more about the CERT program and its requirements, please visit https://www.cobbcounty.org/emergency-management/training

Those wishing to participate should fill out the form at https://cobbcounty.seamlessdocs.com/f/CERTInitialTraining, then email bernard.king@cobbcounty.org with a scanned photo of a Driver’s License. Please include the desired date of C.E.R.T. training you wish to attend or email Mr. King to make special arrangements for a divided session option.

What is CERT?

In an earlier conversation with the Courier, Bernard King, the Public Programs Coordinator with the Cobb County Emergency Management Agency said, “What is the number one threat we all face in the way of disasters? Fires. Wherever we live, work, worship, everywhere we go there could be a fire. How do you plan?  How do you respond?  How do you recover from that? If you make a plan, if you create an awareness about it, and you decide how you’re going to respond before it ever occurs, then you’ve worked it out a little bit in your brain, and your learning curve is not as big.”