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Emergency Response Club Aims to Aid

Photograph by Calliope Arkilic The Bay Area stands on a fault line and has a tendency to burst into flames. For these reasons, natural disasters and emergencies are not out of the question.

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Photograph by Calliope Arkilic

The Bay Area stands on a fault line and has a tendency to burst into flames. For these reasons, natural disasters and emergencies are not out of the question. If disaster strikes, whether it be fires or car crashes, many people would have no idea what to do. This is not the case for the members of the Community Emergency Response Teens (CERT) Club. These students, a small but dedicated crew, meet weekly to learn about and understand what’s necessary for individuals and organizations — like schools — to do if an unexpected problem arises.

“Emergency response is often overlooked because people do not want to think about the worst scenario,” said club member Josephine Fernholz, a sophomore. “Unfortunately, emergencies are an inevitability, so the more we can do to prepare for them, the better.”

CERT aims to provide students with the knowledge of how to protect themselves and Berkeley High School (BHS) in the case of any sort of emergency, as well as the ability to advocate and help others in Berkeley outside of BHS. As Ava Remler, and the leader of the club, says, “We like to call ourselves the best preparing for the worst.”

Despite the somewhat distressing topics that the club addresses, the environment at the lunchtime meetings is friendly, open, and relatively casual as the group goes through online classes: reading different scenarios and identifying problems and solutions to discussing and debating their ideas with each other.

One such course teaches about the procedures of the National Incident Management System (NIMS), which has been put in place in organizations across the country, including BHS, so the members of CERT can learn about the system that is in place, to a degree, in many organizations they’ll encounter. Along with these overarching courses, “[CERT] meetings usually entail doing small interactive training classes, like learning about emergency supply bags, making routes for where to go in a disaster, or even what to do with pets in a disaster,” Remler said.

Additionally, the lunchtime meetings are used to plan and coordinate training sessions outside of school so as many club members as possible will be able to go.

This semester, along with attending trainings outside of school, CERT has focused on fundraising for these outside training sessions, according to Fernholz. So far, CERT has offered six training sessions that, in keeping with the natural disasters that have been occurring around California, have focused on fire safety and CERT has been working with the fire department.

In the future, CERT plans to attend training for a variety of other emergencies, from wilderness first aid to CPR to gun safety, according to Remler.

“With the recent wildfires and other natural disasters, we feel more than ever it’s time for us to get prepared and teach others to do the same. The more people are prepared, the more people overall with be safe and secure,” Remler said.

CERT meets on Tuesdays at lunch in room G-208 and invites everybody to join.