Press Release on the WVU CERT Program
List of CERT Team Members
A message from Chief Roberts—In today’s environment emergencies and disasters occur all too frequently. It is no longer a question of what will happen, but rather a question of when it will happen. We have been working with our campus community to develop emergency response plans for campus and facilities in an effort to prevent, prepare, respond, and recovery from such incidents. This process has been moving forward with much success thanks to our community’s commitment to safety.
We are now preparing to take another giant step forward in building on our past successes. We are instituting a new program that will seek your active involvement. The program is called CERT -Campus Emergency Response Team. Our program will be named the Campus Emergency Response Team. The CERT program exists to educate people about disaster preparedness:
- Facts about what to expect following a major disaster.
- Their role in mitigation and preparedness.
- Training in life saving skills.
- Organizing teams so that they are an extension of our first responders.
- Major event support
Areas of functional assistance to first responders during these events are: - Traffic/Crowd Management
- Building/Campus Evacuations
- Telephone and Administrative Support
- Staging Area Management
- Relief Support
- Housing, Meals, and Refreshments
- Areas of Specialized Training:
o Engineering
o Medical
o Heavy Equipment
o Passenger Endorsement Drivers - Suppression of small fires
- Mass Casualty Triage
- First aid (does not include CPR/AED—don’t have time in a mass casualty situation)
- Search
- Rescue
Training, manuals and CERT backpacks containing personal protection equipment will be provided to all CERT members, the backpacks and manuals courtesy of MECCA.
It is our fervent desire that we never need to activate our CERT program, but now is the time to put this critical program into our emergency planning tool kit. We are now training a WVU Employee Team, and we will be holding training for student volunteers later this fall.
As always, I thank you for your support of our campus safety and security.
Chief Bob Roberts
WVU Police Department
