Students Get CERTified to Respond

After a series of storms wreaked havoc on South Florida last hurricane season, University of Miami junior Danny Carvajal surmised that a team of college students who would aid hurricane victims could be an invaluable resource for the University and community. So Carvajal formed the ’Canes Emergency Response Team (CERT). Composed of more than 30 UM students, the team will perform a number of duties both before and after storms, such as organizing canned food drives for the elderly, staffing the University’s Hurricane Hotline, assisting with food preparation and distribution on campus, and directing traffic snarls caused by inoperative traffic signals.

“We’ll also go out into the community and do some proactive, educational outreach to our CollegeTown neighbors,” says Carvajal, a business management/premed major. And, if necessary, CERT could also set up a food distribution site on the Coral Gables campus.

The first group of CERT students was assembled early this year. Miami-Dade firefighters and paramedics provided the required 20 hours of extensive classroom and hands-on training, which included a course on disaster preparedness and terrorism awareness, fire suppression and search-and-rescue drills, and a mock disaster incident in which they triaged tornado victims.

Keith “Fletch” Fletcher, director of UM’s Center for Volunteer Service and Leadership Development, and David Shatz, a Miller School of Medicine trauma surgeon who was deployed in New York after September 11 and in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, serve as the team’s advisors. Funding for the team comes from the center, the Division of Student Affairs, and a grant from the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

For team president Carvajal, who used to ride along with Miami-Dade Fire Rescue paramedics as a high school student in the county’s Explorer program, creating CERT is part of a life spent assisting others. “An active hurricane season is the last thing we want,” Carvajal says, “but at least we know we’ll be prepared.”