CERT students respond to mock building disaster

Nine Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) volunteers moved carefully in the darkness, stepping over debris and obstacles to treat people who were trapped and injured. 

The Steele County group had been through four weeks of classes, two nights each week, plus two online Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) courses. The mock disaster set up in the basement of the Owatonna Fire Department Tuesday was their final exam. 

“This is an opportunity to put all these skills they’re learning into practice,” CERT instructor Sherry Segal said. “It’s a fun type of drill but serious, because they’re going to practice what they were trained to do.”  

During a briefing before the exercise, students learned their scenario and were organized into teams. They moved first to the main floor bays for a quick look at the triage area.  

Green, yellow, and red tarps marked areas where they would lead “victims”–all community volunteers–they tagged with matching clothespins based on the severity of their injuries. There, first responders would take over with those who needed more advanced care.  

“CERT (volunteers) are trained to know when they can’t handle a situation,” Segal said.  

One team stayed in the triage area The others took the stairs into the dark basement, where they helped volunteers who had been coached and made-up to look like they had suffered a range of injuries. One woman, pale with shock, cried out for her daughter, while a young man lay on the concrete shaking with a seizure.  

All the graduates received a backpack with equipment, a kind of “starter kit” they can build on. Steele County Emergency Management Deputy Director Tom Karnauskas said they can all continue their education.  

“There’s a lot of training everybody gets exposed to,” he said. “We’ll do refresher training so they can learn new skills and refresh old skills.” 

CERT 2022 graduates include: Tom Thiele, Gloria Dietz, Phill Parker, Alision Lueck, Kristen Sailer, Arthur Bartholomew, Christopher Thissen, and Mary Rahrick.