Help communities recover from disasters by joining the Bay County ‘CERT’ program

BAY COUNTY, Fla. ( WMBB ) – Bay County Emergency Services officials are looking for volunteers to join their Community Emergency Response Team, also known as CERT.

“We come together and we supplement manpower during disasters before and after. Volunteer disaster organizations, distribution efforts for supplies, and things like that,” Emergency Management Specialist Jennifer Wilburn said.

Volunteers go through basic first aid training as well as fire safety, first response, and search and rescue. Once they’ve completed training, cert members are deployed to areas in need of assistance.

“We had people deployed for Idalia, and they were responsible for food distribution and running checks for logistics and running distribution POD sites,” Wilburn said.

The Bay County CERT team has not yet been deployed to areas severely impacted by Hurricanes Helene and Milton, but they’re ready to go wherever they’re needed.

“They’ll call and ask for our CERT to be activated, to go down, run the POD site, which is the point of distribution where all of their donated resources come in. They’ll call us to run the shelters for long-term recovery. Basically, right now, we have to wait for that initial damage assessment to go through,” Wilburn said.

CERT officials say it’s crucial for people to get involved and lend a helping hand.

“Just watching the destruction of these hurricanes that seem to be getting stronger, we can only forecast what’s going to happen in the coming years. We can’t stress enough how important it is to have teams like Cert to free up those other valuable resources,” Wilburn added.

The CERT course is fully funded by FEMA. Bay County Emergency Services is offering a course in December.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to mypanhandle.com.