Welcome to the St. George City CERT webpage! CERT stands for Community Emergency Response Teams and is the descendant of the Los Angeles City Fire Department’s program to teach citizens to help themselves in the event of a major earthquake. It was opened up to all disasters when it went nationwide. 

Our Local Program

CERT SG is administered by the St. George Police Department, by civilian volunteers and part time employees. We are fortunate that our city government and police department see the value in citizen’s obtaining some disaster response training and hazard mitigation. CERT can help fill the manpower gap that can occur in a major, widespread disaster. 

We all want a safe community. Disasters are unforeseen, so in order to preserve and restore our beloved community we learn how to recover as quickly as possible. This ability to quickly bounce back to normal (or at least close) is called “Community resiliency”. We also learn about hazard mitigation, or recognizing a potential hazard and working to prevent the hazard from ever taking place! This is more difficult to measure, how many people haven’t died because of modern inoculations? The best way to deal with a disaster is to avoid it.

If your car breaks down in the middle of winter it could be a disaster. If you are prepared with winter clothing, camping gear and experience, if you have trained yourself and your family, then you have an opportunity for a camping adventure.

There are many facets to being prepared; there is the physical, psychological and spiritual aspects that must be revisited often. Our city website is a fantastic resource for the basics of physical survival. Practice is the best way to become psychologically prepared. Camping, first aid classes, volunteering in the community will assist us in our ability to ‘deal with’ a disaster psychologically. Finally there is the spiritual aspect where a person realizes that they are where they are supposed to be and doing good in that situation is what they should do. 

The CERT program gives us the opportunity to take our personal and community preparedness to the next level. The time to prepare for a disaster is before a disaster. The training and organization skills will be of great value in our future even without a disaster. CERT resurrects the purely American spirit of volunteerism and self government. 

Come join us! Get the basics in our CERT classes, then get organized in your own neighborhoods! For more information about CERT please contact us.