Are YOU Ready? CERT Training, Part II

What’s a CERT student without a thick, training manual? What’s the training manual made for other than to scribble notes in and around the lessons, like sketching a rough draft of my home floor plan with a dotted path depicting an escape route? Currently, my 88-year-old dad, John, resides with me. Though he slowly gets around the house with the help of a walker, in my logical mind, a quick escape isn’t in the mix. In the last few years, my dad has sustained minor injuries from several, ground-level falls at home. When my mom, Marian, was alive, she would frantically call me, at all hours, asking for my help (this is before I relegated dad to using a walker a couple of years ago, after my mom died).

During that time, I felt as though I needed a light bar on top of my red, surf-mobile, SUV, as I hastened from Clinton Keith Road and the 215, northbound, all the way to Newport Road in Menifee. Last Easter, my dad called me while I was at church. He had fallen, once again. Arriving to find that I could no longer pick him up by myself, (though he’s tall and skinny) I called 911. He fractured his pinky and ring fingers in his arthritically-deformed, left hand. He was transported to Rancho Springs emergency room, subsequently faring as best as an octogenarian can. My dad is hard of hearing, coupled with left-sided, residual weakness after suffering a massive stroke when he was 47 years old.

Now, we reside together. Other than those minor health issues, I still can’t imagine (that denial thing, again) conducting an orderly, emergent departure from our home. My crisis paradigm is that I respond to help, therefore, I go to the place where people need my rescue intervention. Entertaining the thought that imposition could arise in my workplace, in my church, in my home, really, anywhere, at any time, is actually something I’d prefer not to think about, despite newscasts replete with accounts of the unimaginable. There, I said it. However, I’m not alone. How do I know?

Data from a 2009, national, household, FEMA survey quantifying public attitude and personal, emergency preparedness cites the following:

• 50% of the public is familiar with the alerts and warning systems in their community.
• 70% will rely on a household member.
• 49% will rely on the neighbors.
• 30% expect full-service from the emergency medical system.
• 40% expect a natural disaster or a large-scale, MCI in their community, at some point.
• 53% are confident with their ability to respond in the first five minutes of a sudden crisis.
• 20% are confident in ability to respond to a terrorist attack.
• http://www.fema.gov/areyouready/

Do you like the bullets? Me, too, especially as my floor plan and escape route emerged in a dotted, ink sketch, on a pretty piece of paper (I wished to make it a creative, art project). It took me all of 15 minutes to map out and another 45 minutes to practice the drill, four times, with my dad.

While devising a couple of alternate routes out of the house, omitting the kitchen door which leads into a cluttered garage, I decided to bring my dad’s lightweight, all-terrain, urban assault wheelchair inside. If we must leave hurriedly, I’m going to need some help moving my dad. Tag! I’m it -- assuming I'm home if something should arise. This is about all I can fathom for today as my personal, emergency preparedness plan takes revisionary shape.  If you’d like to peruse any number of escape plan templates, many links pop up on a Google search.

Regardless of the shape and the scale of a disaster, it’s important to have the skill to evaluate the situation quickly and to take effective action to protect yourself. This statement is worth etching in the forefront of your mind. In of this series of articles, I spoke of being of little or no use to anyone in an emergency if I should panic or if I become injured. Tag! Now, you’re it. As your safety plans take shape, I’m going to share some rudimentary, tag lines I learned in my professional, medical and rescue training. Ready or not, here they come:

• Keep it simple, silly. (KISS)
• Triage.
• Airway. Breathing. Circulation.
• Noisy breathing is obstructed breathing.
• All bleeding stops.
• Emergencies are always unexpected.
• Perspective is everything.
• Where there’s smoke, there’s always fire.
• Oil and water never mix.
• Water will hold an electrical charge.
• Live wires are always charged.
• Assume nothing. Ever.

Innumerable clichés exist and I’d love for you to share some with me, but I’m really trying to get you used to looking at the bullets. Why? Because I’m going to put you to work by suggesting that you create a written escape plan with your family, just like the Murrieta Fire Department (MFD) instructors put us to work during the first, full day of CERT training.

Anxiously opening our very own, forest green, back pack, filled to the brim with basic, safety gear: a helmet; a CERT vest; a pair of gardening gloves; a filter mask; triage tags; a wrench; gauze; forms (Paula Hollis and her daughter, Samantha, exchanged admiring glances because, hey, we all looked official wearing the CERT attire). 

A CERT member’s first responsibility is ensuring personal and familial safety prior to responding to an emergency as a group within the community. How a CERT group is called to action is defined by the sponsoring agency. If anything catastrophic occurs in Murrieta, of course, EMS is initiated. From there, CERT members can implement the basic intervention taught in class using the tools in the backpack.

We wore the full garb in a drill session on the last day of training, about which I’ll share in the next segment. Sorting through some equipment, Firefighter/Paramedic (FF/PM), Mike Macalinao demonstrated the use of the wrench used to shut off a natural gas line leading to the house. He also discussed shutting off the outside, main water supply and the various water valves located throughout most homes.

Boxes of bandages, splints, gauze, slings and the like awaited our basic, learning pleasure as we tended to one anothers supposed wounds, fractures and sprains. FF/PM Chris Brann and FF/PM Matt Bentley explained triage: sorting through the injured victims and tagging them according to the injuries. The MFD Explorers assisted teams of students by devising emergency scenarios taking place on the drill ground behind the main fire station and in the adjacent classroom.

Our team scenario: A 7.3 earthquake rattles Murrieta Valley at 10 a.m.  Go!

Team leader, Alba Iniquez, led us to the scene. When we arrived, she began shouting, repeatedly, in the enclosed, acoustical, apparatus floor: “Is anybody in here? I’m with the CERT team. If you can hear me and you can walk, come toward my voice.”

We began walking slowly into the area when we encountered a young man coming toward us holding his broken arm. Still another walked this way and that, a little dazed, but uninjured. Both were quickly triaged and staged nearby. And so it went: four, more victims were scattered throughout the apparatus floor of the fire station, crying, moaning in pain, immobilized by fractures. Others appeared lethargic or lifeless. On the humanitarian side, the inclination of the layman rescuer is to stay with the first victim encountered, while rendering compassion and reassurance – which impedes the process of triage, entirely, as pointed out in Part III in this series of articles. 

On the multiple casualty incident (MCI) side, victims who are expectant or expired are briefly evaluated (as is every victim), and tagged accordingly; they are left where they are found. Triage dictates immediate medical intervention for victims who are seriously injured and have a chance to survive. Those remaining must wait for treatment, indefinitely. Triage is never a spiritually easy call, rather, it’s very objective and methodical, for good reason: In an MCI, rescuers must achieve the greatest good for the greatest number injured people.

For all intents and purposes, we used two, simple acronyms to assess victims: ABCs and 35/2/1.

ABCs: Check the airway: A head tilt or chin lift in a semi-conscious victim may work wonders. Check the breathing rate and effort.  When an injured victim’s breathing rate is 35 or more per minute (barring a conscious, hyperventilating individual), they are tagged as immediate. Poor Circulation is tell-tale because the victim looks pale. Additionally, moderately pinching one of the victim’s nailbeds blanches the tip of the finger for more than two (2) seconds. Unfortunately, two of the mock victims succumbed to their injuries. When the drill was finished, we shared our perspectives and much nervous laughter in being called to task. It was good to know everything went pretty well, but right at this moment, I can't remember what the number 1 means in the acronym.  I'll get back to y'all, shortly. To be continued….