The instructions were simple enough: create a freestanding tower out of construction paper in 10 minutes. At three tables, teams of four spun scissors, tape and neon paper into technicolor towers. All three were done by the 10-minute mark during the opening activities of Saturday’s Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training class at Malibu City Hall .
Class instructor and Malibu Emergency Services Coordinator Brad Davis said that, although the first week of CERT classes always starts with this exercise, the paper towers that result look different every time.
“This exercise is always different,” he said. “Some people get completely possessed by it.”
This may seem like an odd way to inaugurate a series of classes meant to prepare people for situations like fires and earthquakes, but it’s an icebreaker that encourages teamwork, communication and resourceful thinking, Davis said, all of which are necessary to conduct oneself in a disaster.
Davis has been teaching CERT classes in Malibu for 10 years. The classes cover survival skills including fire suppression, medical and first aid response, and search and rescue, and the disasters discussed range from earthquakes to terrorist attacks. The 21-hour course is held over a series of weeks and, at the end, participants receive a certificate indicating they have been CERT trained.
The CERT program was developed in 1985 by the Los Angeles City Fire Department and soon adopted by a number of national and local public safety agencies, including FEMA.
“It was written from the understanding that there’s never been enough firefighters to save everybody,” Davis said.
This is particularly true in Malibu, where there are about 17 firefighters at any given moment for a population of about 1,300, he said.
“They’re just not going to be everywhere at once,” he said. “We need folks to be able to take part in their own survival.”
Another purpose of the class is to teach people to take disaster threats seriously.
Droughts lead to wildfires that destroy property in Malibu in a cycle that dates back over 50 years, Davis said. Despite that history, some people have a hard time believing a fire could impact them.
“One of the biggest issues is people have a certain apathy towards this stuff,” he said. “We’re trying to break that down.”
It’s a line of thinking that Ed Fraga, a Topanga resident, agrees with.
“There’s too many people in Toganga who don’t think a fire is going to happen,” he said. “There’s a general denial.”
The reality of disastrous situations hit home with Fraga when he was on a group hike on Mount Whitney.
“We encountered a dead person,” he said. “I thought, things can happen.”
Fraga started taking emergency preparedness classes in Malibu with Davis soon after. For Fraga, the point of the class is to learn self-reliance in times of emergency.
“Not to be one of those people who does the wrong thing,” he said.
Matt Bentzen, the president of emergency supply maker Ultimate Disaster Kit, came to take the class to plug into the community, he said.
Bentzen served more than five years in the Green Berets, and he’s seen how groups can break down under disastrous circumstances, he said.
“The most important thing is the ability to have calm, the ability to have vision in chaos,” he said. “That’s where community involvement gets in.”
Darlene Dubray, a recent transplant from Hawaii, said she came to the class to learn about survival skills as well as the Malibu community.
“I’m grateful that this is offered,” she said. “It’s free, it’s close by.”
It’s also practical.
Later, the class would be learning how to use fire extinguishers, something that Dubray said is better done the first time in a practice run than in your own home.
“I think that’s very important, to learn that in a calm, educated environment,” she said.
Wendy van Wessel said she’s lived at Point Dume for 15 years and knows how secluded the Malibu community can be in an emergency.
“We are kind of cut off,” she said. “You’ve got to be self-sufficient.”
Van Wessel said she wants to be able to help herself and her neighbors.
“I want to be a solution, not a problem,” she said.
The next series of weekly CERT classes at City Hall begin Thursday, May 7, at 6 p.m. For more information, visit www.malibucity.org or email bdavis@malibucity.org.
