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	WINE COUNTY CERT Neal O'Haire, Emergency Services Director, Napa County, California After the Napa Earthquake of September 2000 a small cadre representing the Napa Valley Community College, Napa County OES, Calistoga OES, American Canyon Fire, and the City of Napa Fire Department decided to implement a viable countywide community emergency response team training program that covers disaster preparedness and mitigation. The goal of this program would be to train 1200 local citizens over 5 years in the national CERT Curriculum and simple hazard mitigation techniques for home and business. This would train 1 percent of our population in these critical skills and allow them through neighborhood and business organizations to become peer advocates for mitigation and preparedness.
The classes would be taught by FEMA trained CERT Instructors from multiple jurisdictions. The Staff time used to develop and deliver the over 50 iterations of the course would serve as the local government offset to the Hazard Mitigation Grant we received for community education. The grant monies would be used to provide the basic student equipment, instructional devices and two light cargo trailers to make the course portable throughout the county.
In the event of a major disaster the trained pool of CERT Volunteers would provide needed backup for first response throughout the county. Sustainment training would be integrated in the program. The CERT cadres would serve as the nucleus of an integrated program of individual, family and community preparedness.
The earthquake demonstrated the lack of simple mitigation procedures, which resulted in approximately $3,000,000 in easily avoidable uninsured losses spread over approximately 5000 families. Additionally there were over 2000 calls into the 911 centers in the first two hours of which less than 10% were truly emergency calls. Simple family preparedness and neighborhood response could have responded to over 80% of the issues that were called in, allowing the trained first responders to deal with the remaining crucial 20%. The popularity of the mitigation education efforts at the local assistance center in the months following the Earthquake demonstrated the openness of the public to simple preparedness and mitigation strategies.
	The Jurisdictions within the Napa Operational Area have the staff to conduct a successful program. There are now 18 FEMA trained CERT instructors. Additionally the geographic diversity and distribution of population requires a high degree of portability to the program. The movement of training materials throughout the area is greatly enhanced by two light cargo trailers where the instructional and individual equipment is stored and transported to various training sites.
In the two and half years we have operated our program we have trained about 450 students. We have conducted 22 basic courses, 5 sustainment courses and we recently completed a CERT TTT course using local experts who have served as contract instructors for FEMA throughout Region IX.
What makes our program somewhat unique is the broad partnership we have enjoyed between the government agencies and the Napa Valley Community College. We deliver our courses as non-credit community education courses through the college. This is a win-win situation for our program and for the college. Our courses help meet the requirements on the college for non credit courses, and community based education and in return they have graciously supported our needs for instructional materials, handouts and reproduction of student handouts.
We jointly advertise our courses, we register each student with the college and this has some obvious advantages. Although we have not had any injuries so far in training the students have the same protection as any enrolled in community education courses and we are protected as college adjunct faculty from general liability requirements. We also are able to use the downtown NVC community education center for our “in town” classes, sustainment trainings and our no-code amateur radio license courses. This partnership has allowed us to stretch our resources and provide a very consistent product to our citizen’s and students.


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