Free Preparedness Training

If you don't know where you are going, how can you expect to get there?
-Basil S. Walsh

Where there is no vision, the people perish.
-Proverbs 29:18

I recently got an e-mail from a person asking about Preparedness training.

Where to begin? There are so many different things to consider and it all depends on what you are Preparing for.

The FEMA site covering preparation for natural disasters is at http://www.ready.gov/
See also http://allreadystl.com/types-of-emergencies/ for a list of emergency prep documents by disaster type.

The LDS church has an excellent introduction to the basics at http://www.providentliving.org/

If you're worried about TEOTWAWKI (The end of the world as we know it) see http://www.survivalblog.com/ which covers surviving on your own - raising your own food, caring for medical needs, protecting yourself, etc.

You can receive free training by volunteering for the American Red Cross or a local CERT team:
http://www.redcross.org/  (drill down to Preparing & Training, then Preparedness Fast Facts).
http://www.citizencorps.gov/cert/

FEMA offers free online training which are required for emergency workers, in particular IS100 and IS700:
http://training.fema.gov/IS/NIMS.asp

To learn more about 72-hour kits see my blog, 72-hour Kits, with links to resources.

Bottom Line

There is no shortage of information online. The hard part is knowing where to begin. Both the Red Cross and FEMA endorse:

Get a Kit, Make a Plan, Be Informed.

Which translates to

• make or buy 72-hour kits for your home, office and car. (see 72-hour Kits and Pet Go-Kits )
• make family plans for how you will respond to house fire and other emergencies. Where to evacuate to, whom to call, etc. (see Family Communication Plan)
• follow blogs like mine and check out the resources above. (see also FEMA tip of the week) 

Emergency Response Politics

"It was chaos. There was nobody there, nobody in charge. And there was nobody giving even water. The children . . . they're all just in tears. There are sick people. We saw . . . people who are dying in front of you."
- CNN producer Kim Segal, describing the New Orleans Convention Center the day after Hurricane Katrina

[Note: the Convention Center was NOT an official shelter like the Superdome. Thousands of people just showed up and expected to be taken care of in a city that was official abandoned. The media handled this very poorly- looking for blame instead of helping evacuate the people to real shelters or notifying officials. TV anchor, Ted Koppel, would accuse FEMA of negligence for NOT learning about the crisis at the convention center from TV news reports.]

A reader of the SurvivalBlog.com objects to Firefighter Charles disaster scenario that I quoted in yesterday's post.

"Firefighter Charles's statement about FEMA's response times shows a lack of understanding of how the process works. In the event of another Hurricane Katrina type natural disaster, the following things have to happen, in the following order:

1. Disaster strikes
2. Local officials setup an incident command
3. Local Emergency Operation Centers (EOCs) are activated. The local emergency operations plan (EOP) is put into action.
4. Mutual aid agreements are activated. If the disaster goes beyond this, then...
5. State EOCs are activated. State EOPs are put into action.
6. The state activates it's mutual aid agreements.
7. If the situation is not contained, the Governor declares a State Emergency. He can then.....
8. Appeal to the President to declare the event a federal disaster - whether it is a Stafford Act event or not.
9. FEMA is then activated and ordered to head the rescue/relief efforts. The FBI is the lead investigative agency for any criminal acts, while the BATFE is the lead law enforcement agency for anything law enforcement related such as security, etc."

Now there are some good points here but I think the responder protests too much. The process above makes Firefighter Charles's point even stronger. Before super-slow FEMA can respond, one has to wait for local bureaucracy and then state bureaucracy to run its course. This rarely happens quickly and you can still expect 72-hrs or more to pass before resources like food and mass shelter are available.

In the case of Katrina the emergency response process was stalled by politics. The mayor of New Orleans ordered everyone to abandon his city with just 19 hours notice. The New Orleans official evacuation plan was not activated; school buses sat unused that could have helped evacuate residents. Those who could not leave were ordered to go to shelter of "last resort" without any provisions for food, water, security, or sanitary conditions. The Louisiana Superdome was designed to handle 800 as a shelter but 30,000 arrived.

Immediately after the hurricane had passed on Aug 30, 2005, Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA's boss, tried to take over the federal, state, and local operations, citing the National Response Plan. This was refused by Governor Blanco of Louisiana who indicated that her National Guard could manage. President Bush, a former governor of Texas, would not overrule a governor acting within her constitutional rights of state leadership.

Still it is wrong to say the Federal Government did nothing. Naval ships were moved to the Gulf before the hurricane hit and Coast Guard helicopters rescued 35,000 individuals from flood waters. Approximately 58,000 National Guard personnel were activated to deal with the storm's aftermath, with troops coming from all 50 states. The Department of Defense also activated volunteer members of the Civil Air Patrol.

700,000 people applied to FEMA for temporary housing. Tens of thousands of trailers were used but in some parishes the local council refused the trailers (not wanting to create a permanent squatters camp perhaps?). Also FEMA would only deploy trailers to regions with working utilities. (Think of the sewage problems that would result otherwise). For those without trailers, FEMA paid for hotel rooms. Five years after the disaster, there are still 260 families in hotels being paid by FEMA.

A Congressional investigation after Katrina found that FEMA and the Red Cross "did not have a logistics capacity sophisticated enough to fully support the massive number of Gulf coast victims." It placed responsibility for the disaster on all three levels of government.

Bottom Line

The National Incident Management System (NIMS) always puts the onus for response on local governments. However local responders NEVER have the resources for a major emergency. In Westchester county with a population of almost 1 million, the local Red Cross and CERT teams have cots for only 30,000 people. If there were mass evacuation from an accident at Indian Point Nuclear power plant, we'd have to rely on neighboring counties and neighboring states for shelter. That requires lots of high-level politics and lots of time.

The worst part of this is that many townships in Westchester, NY refuse to stockpile supplies and designate shelters. Once a town has a shelter plan, they are responsible to maintain it. For towns without a shelter plan, the responsibility goes upon Westchester county.

http://perpetualpreparedness.blogspot.com/2008/09/waiting-for-cavalry.html
http://perpetualpreparedness.blogspot.com/2008/08/hurrican-ready.html

How to Use a Fire Extinguisher

I fell into a burning Ring of Fire,
I went down, down, down, and the flames went higher
and it burns, burns, burns, the Ring of Fire.
- “Ring Of Fire” lyrics, Johnny Cash

To use a Fire Extinguisher, remember PASS:

Pull the Pin
Aim at the Base
Squeeze the Lever
Sweep from side to side.

Most extinguishers have a pull pin or ring to prevent accidental discharge. Begin by pulling out that pin. Next aim at the bottom of the fire. Blowing away the flames at the top of a fire is pointless when there’s a hot base of burning material that keeps generating more flames. You want to cool and smother the fuel of the fire. Now squeeze the lever slowly to shoot out the “foam”. Extinguishers empty quickly (about 10 seconds) so aim wisely and well – don’t rush it; don’t panic. And don’t shoot just at one spot; sweep back and forth to cover the entire base of the fire.

If the heat of the fire is too hot for you get near, then the fire is too big for your extinguisher. Call 9-1-1 before trying to put out a fire so help is on the way. Leave yourself an exit, don’t allow the fire to surround you and trap you.

Be sure you’re using the right kind of extinguishers. Most home types are rated ABC and use a chemical foam as the agent.

A – wood, paper and normal combustibles. Water works well here

B – Oil, grease or fuel fires. Never use water (Oil & Water don’t mix!). Burning oil will just float atop water or spatter and spread.

C – electrical fires. Again, no water – you could shock yourself.

Once the fire is out, don't walk away! Watch the area for a few minutes in case it re-ignites.

Don’t forget to buy a new extinguisher or recharge your old one immediately after use.

Bottom Line

Practice with an old extinguisher to get the feel of it. CERT provides hands-on fire training as so some fire departments. Don’t wait for a real fire to be your first time using an extinguisher.

Resources

http://www.wikihow.com/Use-a-Fire-Extinguisher
http://www.fire-extinguisher101.com/using.html
http://www.fire-extinguisher101.com/
http://www.fireextinguisher.com/intro.html?language=en&industry=other

Animal Response Teams

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” Dwight D. Eisenhower

Over the past many years my wife and I have joined several volunteer disaster response organizations. Our first was WEVR, Westchester Emergency Volunteer Responders. This was a county version of CERT, Citizen Emergency Response Team. We received lots of excellent training and a backpack of supplies but the program was utilized just once that I’m aware of. CERT works much better on the city or neighbor scale. Our county has switched its focus to MRC, Medical Reserve Corps, made up of volunteer doctors and other medical professionals.

Our next organization was the Red Cross Disaster Action Team. We responded to late night calls for help for families with house fires who needed a place to stay and supplies. We learned this is difficult to do with a full time job and our now on weekend call only.

While at a Red Cross volunteer event, we met the organizers of the Westchester Country Animal Response Team (WesCART). After Hurricane Katrina, FEMA realized that many families refused to evacuate their house if it meant abandoning their pets – Red Cross Shelters do not allow pets! In 2006 the Federal Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards (P.E.T.S) Act was passed which requires state and local emergency preparedness plans to include the needs of individuals with pets or service animals during all phases of emergencies. To address this law most states have organized State Animal Response Team (SART) programs. WesCart is a component of the NY statewide EmpireSART.

So far we’ve been given an ID badge, taken online training courses and represented the organization at a Cat show. I’ve just completed the online course for Emergency Animal Sheltering and am overwhelmed by the complexities of a shelter. Topics include:

• Paper work
• Animal check-in and tracking (whose dog is this?)
• Security (is that cat really yours?)
• Decontamination (clean up the animals, vet care, cage cleaning, dealing with animal diseases)
• Safe animal handling (don’t get bit!)
• Animal separation (don’t mix un-fixed girls and boys! Don’t place dogs next to cats, cats next to birds, etc)
• Morgue (sorry your pet died)
• Staffing and supplies
• More paper work
• Food Prep
• Animal walking and waste disposal
• Etc.

I think managing a Red Cross Shelter for people is easier! Hopefully the residents won’t bite, won’t become misplaced, and you won’t be blamed if any babies are made.

Bottom Line

Volunteer! You’ll meet new people and learn new skills. You’ll discover that planning for any emergency is a four-step cycle:

1. Preparation – organizing supplies, attending training classes
2. Response – putting your skills and equipment to work during an emergency
3. Recovery – the cleanup afterwards and adjusting to the psychological impact
4. Mitigation – making new plans, what could be done better next time?

Disaster Animal Response Team

“I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home which answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog which growls every morning, a parrot which swears all afternoon, and a cat that comes home late at night.” - Marie Corelli

If ordered to evacuate your home, would you/could you leave your pets behind? Because most emergency shelters and hotels have a no pet policy, the standard procedure for disasters requires that pet owners leave their loved ones behind. However as Hurricane Katrina clearly showed, when given a choice between their own personal safety or abandoning their household pets, a significant number of people will choose to risk their lives in order to remain with their pets.

In recognition of this, congress passed the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act, Public Law 109–308 (2006). The PETS Act requires that State and local emergency preparedness authorities include how they will accommodate households with pets or service animals when presenting disaster preparedness plans to the FEMA. (A city or state is required to submit a plan in order to qualify for Federal Emergency Management Agency funding.)

Unfortunately, since the passage of the PETS Act of 2006, little has changed. Bureaucracies are slow to change. Under existing liability laws, a shelter could face a damaging lawsuit when someone is bitten by another person’s cute pet. And I suspect this law is not well known; I just learned of it, three years after its passage. It has never been mentioned in my training with the Red Cross or CERT.

Bottom Line

What can you do?

First- write to your mayor and governor and ask them, do they know about this law and what have they done to include pets in the emergency planning.

Second- follow the example of the Lamorinda area in Northern California (Lafayette, Moraga and Orinda in Contra Costa County). They have created a Disaster Animal Response Team (DART) to rescue pets and farm animals during Wildfires. Lamorinda DART consists of CERT graduates who have received additional animal sheltering and rescue training and are able to provide disaster response to humans and animals.

More lessons from Kentucky

Natural disasters arbitrarily bring death and destruction. They act beyond the control of mortal man and his institutions, no matter how grand and well-intentioned those institutions may be. - Jeff Taylor

The quote above comes from the article Katrina in Kentucky on reason.com. The author makes several interesting points.

remember that it was not until the Clinton administration that the federal government was even expected to deal with winter storms. ... Soon enough state and local officials were petitioning Washington for any and all weather-related expenses.

... Natural disasters arbitrarily bring death and destruction. They act beyond the control of mortal man and his institutions, no matter how grand and well-intentioned those institutions may be. Furthermore, the iron law of all disasters is that it is nearly impossible to get aid quickly to people in need. Two corollaries flow from this reality. One, that it is always better to evacuate potential victims than to attempt to rescue certain victims. Two, given that outside help will be unreliable at best, local ad hoc relief efforts are almost always more effective.

Bottom Line

The last point is very important. Local help is your 2nd best source for aid. The best is yourself and your own emergency supplies. If you have a local CERT team consider joining for the training and the neighborhood support.

Waiting to Be Rescued

Most people mistakenly expect that the government will quickly rescue them during an emergency. But a new study of Hurricane Katrina, Wal-Mart Way in Disaster Preparedness/Response: Policy Implication, states that,

"the temptation will always be for [bureaucratic] government agencies to want to be overly involved so that they can continue to justify their current budgets. Although agencies wish to avoid errors of commission, they want to remain involved to justify their existence. Thus, [government] agencies often move in after the fact in the most conservative ways possible." – (economist Steven Horwitz, Ph.D).

Slow moving, regulated, and bureaucratic agencies are the exact opposite of what people want and need during a crisis. The FEMA joint field office to coordinate the federal, state and local response was finally established 12 days after Katrina hit. In contrast, “Within 48 hours of Katrina’s landfall only 56 [out of 176 affected] Wal-Mart facilities were still closed.” With no power, Wal-Marts were accepting hand written IOUs for payment or giving away supplies for free.

Lack of government coordination was endemic for the first two weeks following Katrina. Wal-Mart tried to cooperate with the government in delivering supplies (Wal-Mart has one of the world’s best logistics and supply system). BUT the Wal-Mart’s Emergency Director, Jason Jackson, says he couldn’t identify who was in charge. “There was a lot of adversarialism among the governments. Louisiana wasn’t playing nice with New Orleans, who wasn’t playing nice with the feds. FEMA was in there saying one thing and the state was saying another thing and the county parishes were saying something else.”

Who should Wal-Mart work with asks Jackson, “Is it the city? Is it the state? Is it the DOD? We found ourselves trying to make inroads into a lot of different organizations.”

In some cases local government, in the form of police, had failed completely. Immediately after Katrina, Wal-Mart managers found stores being looted while police looked on unconcerned or sometimes joining the looting.

Bottom Line

The Horwitz study on Wal-Mart vs Government concludes, "Within the political process, … government agencies are more often concerned with pleasing other political actors and finding ways to expand their budgets and power. This often makes them less sensitive to the direct needs of the people who rely on them to get specific tasks accomplished."

See also To Rescue Our Economy Obama Should Follow Wal-Mart’s Example

This same theme of bureaucratic empire building was echoed recently in a story about Government budget bubbles bursting,

“As history has shown repeatedly, budget surpluses pile up in good times, allowing politicians to spend freely. They create new social programs and expand existing ones. They pad public payrolls, build more government edifices and otherwise squander the people's hard-earned money. But they dismiss talk of returning the surpluses to taxpayers because it's contrary to their philosophy of, to borrow a phrase, spreading the wealth around.

Since this government growth is incremental, its ruinous cumulative effect isn't fully apparent until the economy goes south and government revenues plummet. But in bad times, politicians vigorously defend their empire as more necessary than ever and argue further expansion is imperative if they are to help the people hurt by recession. This inevitably leads to tax increases that, to borrow a phrase, fan the flames of recession. But after the economy rebounds and surpluses return, the tax increases remain because politicians need the revenues to scratch their insatiable spending itch.”

So what is the answer? Two things – accountability and decentralization.

1. People must hold politicians accountable for good government – not handouts but wise investments of the people’s money in infrastructure and emergency services.
2. Disaster response works best from the bottom up. You should prepare your family as best you can. Then rely on and work with a neighborhood CERT team. The team will coordinate with the Town or City. The City will get help from the State. The State will receive assistance from the Feds. As you move up the chain of command, response time will get slower and slower and less and less reliable.
3. Very few things work better from the top-down. FEMA is great for training and setting standards BEFORE disasters occur. It should establish universal communication frequencies. FEMA has selected the Incident Command System (ICS) as the national standard for emergency management.
4. BUT during the emergency, the central coordinators need to let the ground troops respond and make choices as local situations dictate. Before Katrina hit, Wal-Mart told its managers, “A lot of you are going to have to make decisions above your level. Make the best decision that you can with the information that’s available to you at the time, and, above all, do the right thing.”
5. Ideally the highest level in charge would coordinate resources and supplies but this failed miserably during Katrina. The Horwitz Wal-Mart study has recommendations for decentralized supply management.

Learning Survival Skills

I am the very model of a modern Major-General
I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical ...
- From the Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan

To continue a theme from yesterday, part of emergency planning is skills assessment. When the worst occurs, how will YOU be able to help? The following is quoted from Survival FAQ which was cited yesterday as a great resource for planning:

"The kinds of skills and materials you need can be very widespread. Depending on the threat you're planning for, you might want the ability to recreate civilization as we know it. This is almost certainly impossible for one person, or even one family ... to be competent at them all. This is why survival groups or small communities are almost always preferable ...

You'll find that certain things are needed for many different threats. First aid skills and materials are always useful, you may find that they show up for every category. ... You might decide that you need to be proficient in emergency first aid, food preservation (drying, smoking, canning, pickling) , animal husbandry, engine mechanic, construction (design and building), fire fighting, sailing, fishing, computer programming, ham radios, weaving cloth, sewing, tanning leathers, bee keeping, accounting, trading, cabinetmaking, farming, dentistry, childbirth, small military unit tactics, advanced emergency medical treatment, improvised explosives, hunting, trapping, welding, metal working, power production and generation, telephone systems, and almost anything else you can think of.

Where to get trained:
... your local community probably offers a wide variety of courses that will help you in your quest. Check with your local community college, high school adult program, community center, or other educational programs. Just don't expect to see a category called "Survivalist Training". Your local fire department probably offers training in CPR and first aid, and if you can join, they'll offer you more and better training. The local law enforcement agency may offer training as well as your county's civil defense / emergency preparedness office.

Where to get experience:
The best way to learn some skills is to do it. ... you can offer your services as a volunteer to any one of a number of organizations. For example, if you're not sure how to cook for large groups of people, volunteer at a food bank, meals-on-wheels, or church group, and learn! If you want to learn how to build houses (and fix them, and how to use tools), organizations like Habitat for Humanity are available, just looking for helpers. You'll learn some skills, but more importantly, meet people who can show you more tips and tricks. Organizations like the American Red Cross usually need disaster workers, first aid instructors, etc., and they'll train you.

It may not be practical to study your specific area of interest, but can learn something that's closely related. If you don't have a field to farm, how about a back yard you can start growing a few vegetables in? If you're an apartment dweller, and don't have a yard at all, you can grow some vegetables, or even just flowers, in window boxes. You probably can't provide all your food needs from a window box (unless it's a huge window), but you can start finding out what it's like, what works, and what doesn't.

Bottom Line

My wife and I follow the advice given above. We have been trained by the Red Cross and by our county disaster program (WEVR) for free as volunteer disaster workers. We've attended low cost classes at a local community college and with community outreach programs.

The knowledge is out there. Go get it.

First Aid

First Aid – There’s a reason why it’s called “first” aid. It has to come first. Threatening injuries have to be stabilized before food and shelter will do any good.

Research has found that most U.S. households are deplorably unprepared to administer first aid. Most households have band aids, some Tylenol, and maybe rubbing alcohol. However, most are lacking in supplies to treat larger wounds like open wounds, burns, or broken bones. Relatively few have CPR training. - - Classes and Careers

This month the theme in our Cub Scout pack is "Be Prepared" with an emphasis on first aid. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the 8-10 year-olds did when tested with first aid questions. Do you know how to treat the following?

o Serious bleeding
o Stopped breathing/Choking
o Internal poisoning
o Heart attack
o Cuts and scratches
o Burns and scalds
o Blisters on the hand and foot
o Tick bites
o Bites and stings of other insects
o Poisonous snakebite
o Nosebleed
o Frostbite
o Sunburn

Bottom Line

If you are not 100% confident with first aid then get some training ASAP. Since Red Cross classes are very expensive one advantage of being a CERT volunteer responder is free training in First Aid and CPR/AED. Other options include - online videos and websites, Scouts, and first aid books.

My favorite book is the American College of Emergency Physicians "First Aid Manual". It has pictures on every page and covers everything.

While books and website are great for review, you really should take a class at least once. Books and web will not test you on tying slings, give feedback on your CPR technique, or hands on with an AED heart stimulator, etc.

UPDATE

See http://chilechews.blogspot.com/2008/10/be-prepared-for-medical-emergencies.html written by someone who attended a Red Cross First Aid class and what was learned.

Neighborhood Watch

"Preparation can only take you so far (what happens when your preps run out?)--ingenuity, social skills, and attitude can take you much further." - blog Code Name Insight

Last month I blogged about Protecting your Food Storage. I suggested you could hide it, share it, or defend it by force. A recent blog article, A Question and an Answer, suggests protection via cooperation. The blogger recommends

"talking to your friends, neighbors, and family members to both build close bonds with them and plan some shared efforts during a disaster, and using your mind instead of your brawn or a weapon."

I can think offhand of two organizations that operate at a local neighbor level, CERT and Neighborhood Watch. In both programs neighbors work together to improve the lawfulness and security of your part of town.

Bottom Line
There's an old saying, "many hands make light work". You don't have to survive a crisis alone. Get to know your neighbors through outdoor dinners, garden work parties, neighborhood cleanup projects, etc. Consider joining a neighborhood organization or starting one. Work together to pool skills and resources like chain saws, off road vehicles, log splitters, etc.

Finger Pointing

"After any crisis ... there is a lot of finger-pointing. Any tips on how to help my team avoid finger-pointing when we face a crisis?" - Harvard Business Publishing

Today I recommend the article, 7 Steps to Stop Finger-Pointing in a Crisis by the Harvard Business School. The advice includes

• "help more, judge less"
• Focus on the future, not a past that cannot be changed
• Everyone should take responsibility for their own behavior
• Ask, "What can I learn from this crisis?"
• Avoid speaking when angry or out of control

I was inspired to talk about this topic after reading the article, Death, destruction, darkness strike Gulf Coast. The writer describes the finger pointing between FEMA and local government after hurricane Ike:

FEMA came under fire as several dozen trucks filled with water and food were not set up in surrounding communities a day after the storm passed. While taking criticism reminiscent of Katrina, FEMA officials immediately pointed a finger at someone else.

In a press conference at FEMA headquarters, Homeland Security
Secretary Michael Chertoff faulted state officials for handing his department the “unexpected challenge” of preparing distribution points (PODs) in addition to delivering supplies.

But state officials said it was the duty of local government, which came as a surprise to Houston Mayor Bill White and Harris County Judge Ed Emmett. “If I could have known something 18-hours-ago, we
could have made plans to pick up something a lot quicker, that’s a fact,” a frustrated Mayor White said in a press briefing on Sept. 14.

Confusion between relief agencies is normal after emergencies. At best once a year emergency response organizations get together to role play a disaster and practice inter-agency communication.

BOTTOM LINE

Don't count on the government save you; save yourself. It was families without survival kits in their homes or apartments that anxiously awaited the word about points of distribution (PODS) after the horror of Hurricane Ike.

If you are self reliant you won't be in this situation of this person...

"It is a damn shame that they’ve been sitting up arguing like children about whose fault it is when my family and others were in serious need. I was standing in line for nearly six hours waiting for water and food to arrive at one site.” - FinalCall.com

See CERT for details on personal emergency training.

CERT

“As a rural county, Millard County realized 15 years ago that it might have to depend on itself in a disaster. We began serious training citizens to take care of themselves. We now have 1,000 residents trained or one tenth of Millard County trained in CERT.”
- Janet Linquist

Today I recommend the article Mock disaster training for CERT trainees from vernal.com. When catastrophe strikes, neighbors may have look to each other for help. That’s why CERT begins at the level of the neighborhood. This is free training in using fire extinguishers, light search and rescue, first aid, and more.

Bottom Line
The federal website for CERT is http://www.citizencorps.gov/cert/
You can register to join, find a local team or event start your own neighbor team. There are also online training videos that anyone can view.

Local Resources

"All politics is local" - Tip O'Neill, US Congressmen

There is a recent article with a controversial title, The case against disaster relief. It cites a conclusion from a report by the Disease Control Priorities Project:

The immediate lifesaving response time is much shorter than humanitarian organizations recognize. In a matter of weeks, if not days, the concerns of both the population and authorities shift from search and rescue and trauma care to the rehabilitation of infrastructure (temporary restoration of basic services and reconstruction). In Banda Aceh, Indonesia, after the December 2004 tsunami, victims were eager to return to normalcy while external medical relief workers were still arriving in large numbers.

People mean well and want to help after emergencies. However most offers of help are rejected or arrive too late. Fresh food donated is tossed out - who knows if some joker wants fame by poisoning rescue workers? Supplies are given in huge quantities but no one has the trucks and logistical support to ship them where they are needed. Volunteers offer help at disaster scenes but most are turned away - perhaps they are really looters trying to get inside?

If you really want to help consider the following:

1. Register now with Red Cross or CERT.
You'll need to get a Red Cross or CERT photo ID, volunteer to help, receive training, and wait to be called for service.

2. Never just show up and demand to help.
Some exceptions - medical, police, fire staff (with ID).

3. Call the Red Cross, United Way, your church
Find out what they are collecting, don't just assume they want socks or dolls.

BOTTOM LINE
The best help during an emergency is local help. They know the area, the people and are already on site or near. Do all that you can to support local disaster teams versus the less efficient and costly outside rescue teams.

Earthquakes and LAFD

On July 29 L.A experienced a magnitude 5.4 earthquake. This is classified as "moderate" with slight damage to buildings by the USGS. Fortunately the L.A. Fire Department is a national leader in disaster response and preparedness.

• The LAFD has published an excellent Emergency Preparedness manual (PDF).
  
• In 1985 the LAFD began a program of Citizen Emergency Response Teams (CERT) to provide citizens with basic training in disaster survival and rescue skills to improve the ability to survive until responders or other assistance could arrive. In 1994 the CERT program was made national under the guidance of the Emergency Management Institute (EMI) of FEMA. My wife and I are CERT members in NY and recommend it highly.
  
• The early '80s also saw the creation of the Incident Command Structure (ICS), born from the need to coordinate local, state and federal rescue agencies during California forest fires. Today ICS is the FEMA approved organization plan for all emergency response.

Bottom Line: Preparation prevents Panic. An informed and trained public can play a positive role in emergency response. I'll close with some L.A. earthquake humor. Erin at TopShelf has created an L.A. scale for measuring earthquakes. For example:

5.0 is a Hug-a-Tourist. That's when a perfect stranger in the mall grabs you and hangs on for dear life and you know they're from out of town.
5.5 is a Ceiling Check, all the natives and people who've been here for twenty years or more will look up at the nearest door, just to make sure they know where it is.

See the complete list at http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/blog-entry/8580/counting-seismologists-or-earthquake-terminology-101#new