Everyone Is Doomed
| April 30th, 2010At least that’s the case if you live in San Diego.
Last night’s CERT class went over terrorism and it’s pretty sobering to see what a bulls-eye San Diego has on it. We have a huge military presence in town as well as an international border to the south and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Considering the city has decided public safety funding is less important than building a new football stadium or removing a cross from the top of a mountain, the odds of a catastrophically awful event here in town looms heavy.
But, there’s not a whole lot you can do about terrorism until it actually happens. Sure, there’s a strike team that works behind the scenes trying to prevent something form happening, but it’s a cat and mouse game and usually it’s the bad guys who are a step ahead. Nonetheless, it doesn’t hurt to be prepared for the worst.
We also discussed how we’re to be mentally prepared to see someone die as they pretty much guaranteed that we WILL see someone die in our duties. It’s easy for me to say that I have no problem with that, but who knows what’ll happen at crunch time. I don’t think seeing a body or covering one up will be nearly as tough as having to tell family members what happened. The psychology of that is pretty intense.
That was our last class. Saturday, May 8th, is the final drill where we’ll be applying all that we have learned into some fake-real world type scenarios over at the place the firemen train at. Search, rescue, triage, putting out fires, cribbing, teamwork. And mayhem, no doubt. Not sure if anyone can really fail the class (well, skipping the final drill would qualify) and we’re actually encourage to make mistakes. Theory being that we should be able to hit the ground running when called upon.
We’ll also get to meet our local/regional reps to setup meetings and continued education. I’m definitely looking into the Ham Radio course.
