MUNCIE, Ind. (AP) - The light bulb turned on for Randy Ash in March 2012 when he watched with a helpless feeling as several communities in southern Indiana were left crippled by a series of devastating tornadoes.
What if similar disasters were to happen right here in East Central Indiana?
“I was just asking myself, ’What can I do to help, and how do I go about helping?’” Ash recalled.
He soon got the answers he was looking for.
By utilizing the Delaware County Emergency Management Agency’s Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training, Ash and 27 of his coworkers at Poly One - a polymer producer with a plant on East Memorial Drive in Muncie - are now officially trained to help emergency officials respond to local large-scale disasters.
“It goes along with paying it forward,” Josh Mercer, a machine operator in his 11th year at Poly One, told The Star Press (https://tspne.ws/1ajHhrm ). “If I needed help, I know I’d like the help of the community, also.”
Ash first got in touch with Jason Rogers last year, when the director of the Delaware County EMA was brought in to speak to Poly One employees about the CERT training process.
“The premise behind CERT is doing the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people,” Rogers told The Star Press. “You learn disaster medical triage and equipment and about making decisions under stress, and it gives you a knowledge base and tools to basically become an emergency responder to your neighbors, neighborhood or community.”
Rogers said he was impressed by the interest of the employees participating in the training at Poly One. Each person had to complete 24 hours of various classes, such as disaster psychology.
“All their classroom time was done at their plant in their training room,” Rogers said. “People would stay over after work several hours each Tuesday and Thursday until it was completed.”
Cindy Collins, a quality auditor at Poly One, said she especially enjoyed the hands-on experience the CERT training provided.
“I also wanted to help the community and give back a little bit,” said Collins, who is in her 15th year at the company. “I know, economically, it would help the community with more volunteers, and you get a hands-on training on how to do that and how to organize it.”
The best part of the training, those at Poly One agreed, was the “final exam” taken at the Henry County EMA training facility. The group underwent several emergency scenarios at the three-story “disaster town” setup, where their skills were really put to the test.
“It was very intense,” Ash recalled. “They try to make it as realistic as possible.”
Rogers said local EMA officials - many of whom have experience at recent disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and Super Storm Sandy - played “victims” in the live training session.
“We can control the light level and there’s smoke and there’s heat and different things we can simulate,” he said. “It does get your pulse rate up and your adrenaline rushing, and it puts you under stress to make decisions.”
Mercer said he left the “final exam” with a fresh perspective about emergency responders.
“You don’t realize how much of a disaster a scene can be until you’re put in that position,” he said. “You talk about a fire evacuation, they simulate the smoke there and you simply cannot see. Until you’re in it, you don’t realize how smoky it can be.”
Those who complete CERT training can be used in a variety of roles during a local disaster, which could include floods, excessive heat, severe thunderstorms, tornadoes or winter storms.
Rogers said volunteers with proper training are invaluable during and after disasters, and can often provide critical help with neighborhood checks, evacuations, sandbagging, initial damage assessments or the distribution of emergency information to the public.
Ash, a production manager in his 20th year at Poly One, said he’s certainly not hoping for a local disaster, but should one occur, he’s satisfied that he could play a role in adding to the area’s volunteer base.
“We could be called to help, whereas before, you saw it on the news and you’re thinking, ’What could we do?’” Ash said. “Now, we could easily be there to help them.”
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Information from: The Star Press, https://www.thestarpress.com
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