More Volunteers Needed for Montgomery’s Community Emergency Response Team

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Many people across the state and from neighboring states are extending a helping hand to the people of Lee County, impacted by Sunday’s tornado.

In Montgomery, EMA officials are calling for more people to join its community emergency response team.

Over 20 people are part of one of Montgomery’s community emergency response teams. But there is a need for more volunteers.

“We need as many as possible that are trained to respond to these situations that we have no matter if it’s a lee county type of incident or something but we need to be prepared to be able to take care of us before we have to call for those outside resources,” says Montgomery EMA Christina Thornton.

Thornton is hoping to get at least 30 more people on-board. Those volunteers go through 9 weeks of training that could potentially save lives.

“Fire safety, having fire safety plans, tornado plans inside your home. A lot of kids do tornado and fire drills at school but they don’t do them at home. We teach them basic medical training whether it’s how to splint, how to clear an airway, CPR, things like that,” says Thornton.

Montgomery resident Karen Jones, just like many people, says she was trained in CPR but needs a refresher and more training to help others.

“We should be ready to move if our neighboring counties and cities need us. We need to be properly trained to assist our other communities and neighbors when they need extra help,” says Jones.

Thornton says, the training also teaches basic search and rescue, which can be applied in any emergency disaster.

“If your home was destroyed and you need to try and find a family member you can kind of search yourself and then ultimately help your neighbors. We teach them incident command and the operational components of those types things,” says Thornton.

When there is an emergency, volunteers should be in action within 2 hours.

“If we make the call, there’s a reason we’re calling you, whether that’s to help us set up a shelter, whether it’s registration to help us with our training exercises. We utilize it as much as possible so they feel as much part of our first responder family,” says Thornton.

There are over 20 community emergency response teams across Alabama.  Right now, those active in Montgomery’s community response team, train annually at Brew Tech High School.

For more information about joining Montgomery’s CERT team click here