On August 18th, seventeen Wesleyan staff members and four community participants gathered in Woodhead Lounge with the common objective of making Wesleyan a safer, more prepared campus.
Just three months after both the Hall-Atwater Fire and the loss of Johanna Justin-Jinich ’10, the group in Woodhead joined for a three day Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training program.
The CERT, is a collective run by Citizens Corps, a federal service program run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. According to the Citizen Corps website CERT is meant to “educate people about disaster preparedness for hazards they may encounter in their area.”
There are thirty-seven CERTs in Connecticut alone with nearly 4,000 active teams nationwide.
“CERT would’ve been a great resource to draw from after the shooting. We could have had a team helping escort people from Foss Hill, taking people off-campus, and rather than five people handing out lunches, there could’ve been a dozen,” said Bill Nelligan, director of Environmental Health, Safety and Sustainability. Nelligan co-facilitated the August workshop along with Joyce Walter, Director of the University Health Center.
Nelligan and Walter attended a “Train the Trainer” workshop at Western Connecticut College in March where they learned traffic control, first aid and how to shore a collapsed house. In addition to getting the CERT basics down, the future trainers were instructed on how to lead workshops in their own communities with the ability to teach all skill levels and learning styles.
“We were instructed key things both hands on and in the books,” Walter said. “We were challenged with an assignment to come up with our own lesson plan as well, and the teams were evaluated by the trainers.”
When Nelligan and Walter returned to Wesleyan, they joined up with the Middletown CERT and received a $3,025 state grant from the Department of Homeland Security in order to lead the August workshop. In three days the participants were led through twenty-four hours worth of instruction modules.
“The CERT program provided me with valuable information,” said participant Joyce Topshe, the Associate Vice President for Facilities. “The most important lesson for me was how to methodically search a building for victims and then how to manage a mass casualty event and do the most good for the most people.”
The August session tried to branch out to the whole community, bringing in staff from all parts of campus giving them both a theoretical and an in-practice look at emergency preparation.
“In our training site we turned out the lights, and had obstacles on the floor and ceiling,” Walter said. “There were wires and victims around the room. We divided the group into four teams so that everybody got a chance to both observe and lead. When they got [to the room] they had to put a cross on the door indicating a hazard site, and then use flashlights, goggles and hard-hats to do a search, find the victims and perform basic triage.”
In the future, Nelligan and Walter hope to expand the CERT at the University, and intend on recruiting a base of 100 volunteers, pulling from the faculty, staff and student body.
“This is really an opportunity for the Wesleyan community to become active and aware, effecting a visible change,” Nelligan said. “It makes us all more responsible for the campus.”
In January, after Winter Break, Nelligan plans to hold another training session with Residential Life, the student EMT club and other interested volunteers.
Meanwhile, the current CERT will meet next week to discuss strategies for assisting the Davidson Health Center should there be an outbreak of H1N1 Flu. The team also plans on helping their Middletown colleagues give the seasonal flu shot at the Freeman Athletic Center in October.
“We have this group, this contingency on campus that’s willing and able to help out. We have 3,000 students on campus, so we need to make CERT an available option,” Nelligan said. “Plus it’s fun too, and you get a cool vest.”
Students, faculty and staff wanting more information on the CERT can visit www.citizencorps.gov/cert, or email Bill Nelligan at wnelligan@wesleyan.edu.