About Us

Mission

"To provide area residents and first responders a quality resource for safety education, hazard mitigation, emergency response assitance and other vounteer efforts"

Goals

The goals of the Gwinnett CERT prgram are;

To do the greatest good for the greatest amount of people.
To maintain team readiness through ongoing training and meetings.
To gain and maintain acknowledgement and respect from area first responders and residents.
To maintain professionalism in all areas within the scope of the program.
To focus great effort in maintaining the safety, in ordered importance, of ourselves, team members, and all other victims or rescuers.

Objectives

To establish and maintain teams of qualified and trained individuals who can execute the following:

Augment the local emergency services and emergency management officials with trained individuals.
Assist law enforcement functions including traffic direction and security.
Assist in victim triage and rescue.
Assist with sheltering, mass feeding and other support function staffing.
Integrate operations with other CERT teams as directed by other first responders.
Provide communications capability with individual team members and coordinate communications with other CERT teams.

The Gwinnett County Community Emergency Response Team (Gwinnett CERT) Program is part of the local and national Citizen Corps effort to incorporate and utilize volunteers in the community. Citizen Corps is endorsed by the President of the United States and the Department of Homeland Security. Gwinnet CERT is endorsed by Gwinnet County Emergency Management Agency along with Fire and Police Services.

Gwinnett CERT members are trained in basic response techniques in order to assist local citizens and first responders in disaster or emergency situations. This helps to insure an organized and efficient response to a large-scale emergency or disaster occurring in Gwinnett County.

Local government prepares for everyday emergencies. However, during a disaster, the number and scope of incidents can overwhelm conventional emergency services. The CERT program is an all-risk, all-hazard training. This valuable course is designed to help you protect yourself, your family, your neighbors and your neighborhood in an emergency situation.

The CERT program is a positive and realistic approach to emergency and disaster situations where citizens may initially be on their own and their actions can make a difference. While people will respond to others in need without the training, one goal of the CERT program is to help them do so effectively and efficiently without placing themselves in unnecessary danger.

In the CERT training, citizens learn to:

manage utilities and put out small fires
treat the three medical killers by opening airways, controlling bleeding, and treating for shock
provide basic medical aid
search for and rescue victims safely
organize themselves and spontaneous volunteers to be effective
collect disaster intelligence to support first responder efforts