New Page 2

		LET 'ER BUCK! REGIONAL EMERGENCY RESPONSE TEAM RODEO *Rachel Jacky, Community Emergency Services Manager Portland, Oregon Fire Bureau* The Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) model has been adopted by a number of jurisdictions in northwestern Oregon and southwestern Washington and our mutual interests led to a joint event last October—the first Pacific Northwest Emergency
Response Team Rodeo. The design team for the Rodeo included representatives from the Portland, Hillsboro, Lake Oswego and Oregon City fire departments, and the Clark Regional Communications Agency (just across the Columbia River in Washington State). By the time we held the Rodeo, we also had participants from two additional fire districts in the region. Each organization that helped design the Rodeo had conducted or sponsored CERT-type training for several years and we shared a number of objectives for the regional event: Participants would practice and improve their disaster response skills in an atmosphere of friendly competition; Participants would renew their commitment to NETs/CERTs/NERTs while having fun and networking with team members from throughout the area; Officials and other program supporters would have a chance to observe the teams in action and to work directly with the volunteers; and, Media coverage would raise the visibility of the existing programs and also encourage other jurisdictions to initiate similar programs. It took us a year to put together the Rodeo (literally a year to the day from our first meeting to talk about mutual interests to the day of the Rodeo!). Coming up with the basic design and working through a wide range of operational and logistical details took a lot of breakfast meetings and commitment from every member of the group.
	The actual event? 110 individuals from the various CERT/NET/NERT programs participated in the day-long Rodeo as response team members, radio operators or "victims". All participants had to complete disaster response team training consistent with the FEMA CERT Course, paid a $10 registration fee (scholarships were offered by all of the sponsoring jurisdictions, and two of the jurisdictions paid the registration fee for all of their participants), and (of course) signed a hold harmless agreement regarding all Rodeo activities. Organized into teams, they went through five skill drills—a fire extinguisher relay, splinting/bandaging, triage/patient transport, search maze, and cribbing/extrication. The splinting/bandaging drill and the triage/transport drill used live victims who had been moulaged for maximum effect.
Each drill was preceded by a refresher presentation that provided a quick review of basic techniques and safety tips for the drill. Because each Rodeo team was a mix of participants from the different programs, the refresher presentations also helped assure that everyone would be using the same basic procedures, e.g., the same markings for immediate, delayed and dead victims in the triage drill. The refresher presentations were paired with 20-minute demonstrations on topics of general interest to emergency response team volunteers—canine search team, chain-saw safety, survival hygiene, and knot-tying. With teams rotating through drills and refreshers/demonstrations staged all over the Fire Bureau Training Center, keeping everyone on schedule would have been next to impossible, except for ham radio operators who helped maintain the pace while practicing their skills. Two hams worked with the exercise controllers to relay messages to/from a ham traveling with each of the teams and announced the :20 and :25 mark during each 30-minute scenario. The traveling hams relayed these announcements as needed to their respective teams and (we were all amazed to find) the Rodeo proceeded on schedule. Along with figuring out the drills and the schedule, and ways to keep on schedule, the design team faced a couple of other challenges. One issue was how to encourage some competition (in keeping with the rodeo theme) while assuring that the competition would be friendly and would not compromise safety during the drills.
To help keep the competition friendly, the Rodeo teams were assembled on site and each group included participants from each of the different programs. This guaranteed that individuals from all the programs would have a chance to get acquainted and share ideas and expertise during the Rodeo. Shared expertise was extended to the role of team leader, too, as the teams were instructed to rotate that responsibility as they moved through the drills.
To formalize the element of competition, the trainers at each drill used a rating sheet with set criteria to record how each team performed in terms of effectiveness and rescuer safety. At the end of the day, token prizes were awarded by the trainers to the winning teams. The ranking of the teams’ performance was adjusted slightly to assure that each received a prize (a Rodeo medallion on an accessory carabiner for each team member) for one of the following: "Fastest and Safest Fire Extinguishment" to the team that put out the most fires in the extinguisher relay without breaking any safety rules. (In presenting the award, the lead trainer for the relay noted that a total of 241 fires had been extinguished during the Rodeo.) "Learned the Most in the Search Maze" to the team that lost the most members to "injury" or "death" by failing to observe hazmats, holes in floor, overhead wires and other hazards in the Search Drill. "Most Cared-For Hands and Feet" to the team that put their hands/feet in harm’s way the least number of times during the Cribbing/Extrication Drill. "Most Creative Splint" to the team that made most creative use of materials to correctly splint a fracture in the Splinting/Bandaging Drill. "Most Effective Pre-Planning" to the team that immediately assigned key positions of leader, safety and medical, and discussed and set a plan of action before beginning extrication. "Most Creative Carry" to the team that made most creative use of materials and/or people to safely transport a patient. "Best Overall Team" to the team that was ranked #1 or #2 by most of the raters. The costs of the Rodeo? Not insignificant. In addition to the time required to plan the Rodeo, the event itself required 33 staff whose time was covered as an in-kind contribution by the sponsoring jurisdictions. We had corporate support for items like the big tents and all the fire extinguishers, and the Red Cross had their coffee canteens available all day. We still ended up with another $1150.00 for lunches, prizes, banners, and various materials that weren’t covered by the registration fees. The results? The participants’ evaluations were very positive. On a scale of 1 – 5 ("5" being the highest), over 91% rated the various drills and refresher/demonstrations 4 – 5 and less than 2% rated them 1 – 2. The evaluations also indicated that the participants felt that none of the drills should be replaced and that the search drill and the extrication drill had been especially valuable. After reviewing the evaluations and debriefing the staff who had conducted the Rodeo, the design team concluded that we had met our objectives for the event. And, after some members of group got some rest, the design team has decided to conduct another Rodeo in April 2000. We’re going to consider some new design features—the same skill drills, but with different levels of difficulty, some new topics for the demonstrations, more time built into the drills and demonstrations for questions from the team members, etc. We also hope for expanded corporate sponsorship and know that two more CERT programs in the region will participate in the event. As we say out here in the West, "Let ’er buck!" A video program about the Pacific Northwest Emergency Response Team Rodeo is available on the FEMA website: http://www.encoding.com/fema/videoondemand.html Select "C.E.R.T. Rodeo."

Return to *THE CONNECTION*