Emergency management officials welcomed new Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) Leader Steve Bales on January 25, 2013 at Station 1 of the Brownwood Fire Department.
Bales moved to the area recently from Hockley County where he was the CERT leader for five years. He retired after 39 years in the oil field business, working with Occidental Petroleum, and now enjoys volunteering with CERT and fishing in his spare time. He is also a member of the Early Church of Christ.
According to Brownwood’s Public Health Emergency Preparedness Coordinator Jodie Armstrong, Bales brings a great amount of knowledge and training to the position he will hold as the CERT leader. Although Bales will be replacing Dave Fair as the CERT leader, Fair will still be involved as a trainer.
Bales stated that he is excited to coordinate with Brown County and Brownwood leaders to establish just how CERT will operate. He explained that the job of CERT is to assist the community in any way that helps it be better prepared for emergency situations, “We’ll do whatever Brown County emergency management leaders want us to do.”
The first item of business in Bales’ new position is to recruit a larger number of volunteers for CERT. He explained that he was able to work with the initial CERT group in Hockley County, building a team from scratch and developing them into a highly effective group that was very involved in the community and an asset in times of need. In fact, Bales’ stated that during 2011, the CERT group in Hockley County responded to 11 fires (wildfires and large building fires). They provided support of first aid and rehabilitation stations for the firefighters (drinks, food and a place of rest) while they fought fires that year.The first meeting under his leadership will be held at 7:00 PM on Monday, February 4th in the council chamber at Brownwood City Hall. Those interested in becoming a CERT volunteer, as well as current CERT members, are invited to attend.
“I want to commend Dave Fair for getting the CERT team established and trained in Brown County,” said Bales, knowing the work it takes to get an effective group started. “CERT takes pride in disaster preparedness for us as a group and also as a community. A lot of CERT members are chaplains, which helps reduce stress for victims of disasters.”
Bales stated that he hopes to be able to coordinate with local volunteer firefighters and their ladies auxiliaries, Ham radio operators, volunteer ambulance groups and community/neighborhood watch groups to form localized CERT teams in different areas of the county.
“You just can’t have a viable responsible community without them, trained volunteers. CERT members are able to take up the slack for leaders that can do only so many jobs during an emergency or disaster,” explained Armstrong. “In this area, first responders, firefighters and police officers make up about 70 people, and split up to help 35,000 people in a disaster will be impossible.”
Brownwood Fire Chief and Brownwood Emergency Management Coordinator Del Albright agreed, stating that volunteers are very important.
“The more volunteers we can get and the more from different walks of life we can get, the more effective our CERT teams will be,” said Albright. The group of emergency leaders discussed the needed growth for Brown County’s CERT organization.
The CERT program operates through the West Central Texas Council of Governments and has access to emergency response assets such as communications and medical trailers throughout the region. Throughout the state, other entities such as the Texas State Guard also cooperate with the local and regional emergency management leaders and CERT teams.
Three times each year, these entities work together in emergency drills with mass casualties and infrastructure loss scenarios. Through this, they are able to learn what works and what goes wrong during times of disaster to better prepare for the real emergencies.
The CERT program was started after the attacks on September 11th by Homeland Security to train local citizens to help in the community during disasters. The basic responsibility of CERT is to respond in times of natural or man-made disasters. Members respond in their area of the community or county offering response before emergency responders arrive.
CERT members are trained for light fire suppression, light search and rescue, disaster medical, emotional first aid and response to terrorism.
CERT training is free and takes about 20 hours to complete. For more information about the Brown County CERT organization, contact Steve Bales by calling 325-998-5925 or email stevebales1@aol.com.
Pictured above are Del Albright (Brownwood Fire Chief & Emergency Manager), Dave Fair (CERT trainer), Brent Bush (Brown County Emergency Management Coordinator), Steve Bales (CERT Leader), Jodie Armstrong (CERT volunteer and Incident Management Team), LTC Steven Chung G3 ACC Texas State Guard, Team SGT William Jensen G3 ACC Texas State Guard, and Specialist Gary Kintigh. Texas State Guard members were present during the introduction of Bales as the new CERT leader and had been in the area for a Civilian Military Co-op for county and city for annual training.
