History
The concept of widespread local volunteer emergency responders was implemented and developed by the Los Angeles Fire Department in 1985. The Whittier Narrows earthquake of 1987 showed the need for preparing citizens to take care of themselves and their loved ones after a disaster.
In the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, residents of San Francisco's Marina District help run lengths of fire hose from a fireboat to firefighters ashore after the hydrant system failed. Later, the Fire Department worked with the community to form the City's NERT program (Neighborhood Emergency Response Team).
By 1993, the Federal Emergency Management Agency had made the program available nationwide; by 2012, CERT programs were offered in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands.
CERT and Citizen Corps were transferred to the Office of Domestic Preparedness (now the Office of Grants and Training) in August 2004.
Read more about this topic: Community Emergency Response Team
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the experience of every child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder into order.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“All things are moral. That soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)