On a Friday afternoon, a small group of JCCC employees approached a three-story apartment building with smoke billowing from windows and debris scattered across the parking lot. A tornado had passed through just an hour before. After 30 minutes of fire suppression, search and rescue, and medical triage, the JCCC employees had assisted a dozen people who were injured, dazed and confused.

Or so it seemed. It's all in a day of training for a CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) volunteer.

Community Emergency Response Training is a national program that includes classroom learning as well as several hands-on experiences, including a short disaster recovery simulation exercise like the one described above. Some of the topics covered include disaster scope, searches, first aid, fire extinguisher use and communication.

To date, JCCC has 135 CERT volunteers who have completed three days of disaster training at the Overland Park Fire Department Training Center and received a certificate from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. JCCC was one of the first entities to embrace CERT training and has committed the greatest number of people.

At JCCC, CERTs are integrated into the college's overall emergency plan along with JCCC counselors who have received Critical Incident Stress Management certification training. The CERT program at JCCC is managed by the Staff and Organizational Development division and the College Emergency Response Planning Team. "Having our own college CERT team allows us to be more self-sufficient in the event of a regional incident when local authorities and response agencies may be overwhelmed," said Alisa Pacer, JCCC emergency preparedness manager.

CERT training provides basic team preparedness and response in the face of a catastrophic disaster when emergency services are not available - from turning off gas sources with an ingenious 4-in-1 tool to sorting victims by degree of injury.  The two major CERT mottos are "Do no harm" and "Do as much good for as many as possible."  Teamwork is a basic premise, and the main class objectives are competence as well as confidence.

"It opened my eyes to a number of issues regarding home safety and emergency preparedness," said Alan Swarts, director of assessment, analysis and design in Student Services, and a recent CERT participant.

CERT volunteers receive a backpack filled with emergency supplies and a helmet with their registry number paid for by  a Homeland Security grant. The training is paid for by the JCCC Foundation, and lunches are furnished by the college's Staff and Organizational Development division.

In an emergency, the college's CERT volunteers would work under the supervision of the JCCC Police Department's office of emergency preparedness.