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
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“We may pretend that we’re basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.”
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“The true theater of history is therefore the temperate zone.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“As History stands, it is a sort of Chinese Play, without end and without lesson.”
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