NEMCo and the City of Woodinville partner to deliver CERT training

Woodinville CERT class
Photo courtesy NEMCo

By Kevin Lowery – NEMCo Emergency Manager

For the past seven weeks, a group of students have been spending their Thursday evenings taking the FEMA based CERT Basic course at Fire Station 31 in Woodinville. 

While this group of students included residents from throughout the Northshore Region (including cities from Shoreline to Woodinville), it mostly consisted of Woodinville residents learning important disaster preparedness and response information from CERT instructors sponsored by the Northshore Emergency Management Coalition (NEMCo).

The course concluded this past Saturday when the class completed its functional exercise at Fire Station 51 in Kenmore. 

This exercise utilized the Shoreline Fire Department’s training facility to test the new CERT members' ability to perform building searches, medical triage and basic first aid, use lifting and cribbing to removed injured/trapped persons, as well as the use of fire extinguishers to put out small fires that may be encountered after a disaster event.

The completion of this course not only marks the third successful course hosted by NEMCo this year, but it also demonstrates the ideals of neighbors helping neighbors and interagency cooperation. 

It successfully brought neighbors from throughout the region together for a common emergency preparedness goal and utilized resources from the two major regional fire departments in the area, East Side Fire Department and Shoreline Fire Department. 

Building this kind of interagency cooperation prior to a disaster is vital to having an efficient emergency management system when an event occurs. NEMCo and the City of Woodinville are very proud of these graduates and they the dedication to emergency preparedness their class represents.

For more specific information on NEMCo and disaster preparedness, visit our website at NorthshoreEMC.com