Ridgefield Community Emergency Response Team, 100 Days and Counting! Thank You, Volunteers!

Today marks day 100 of Ridgefield Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) activation to support the town's Covid-19 response. Thank you to the men and women who have dedicated their time to keep our community informed and safe. We are beyond appreciative.

According to CERT, during the past 100 days, over 30 town volunteers have dedicated well over 4,500 hours of their time to help the town response. Over the past 100 days, they've moved from providing case counts and information on closures to now helping the Town with the re-opening efforts.

"Our volunteers have been involved in press releases, outreach and information both online and offline, coordination of the Region 5 Regional Coordination Center, local PPE distribution, and providing a liaison to the National Guard for the entire region. Additionally, a handful of our volunteers have been instrumental in standing up and running "Ridgefield Responds" to help well over 100 of our neighbors through a difficult time," they explain.

CERT says that while their team was initially built to handle shorter duration activations (week-long power outages, etc), over the past few years, "it's clear that we've built a very scalable team infrastructure that has been able to not only adapt to a new challenge and longer timeline, but we've been able to seamlessly add volunteers to activities to allow other volunteers to handle family concerns (and we even had a volunteer contract Covid and have to spend time recovering)."

CERT was able to quickly move all operations out of our Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and bring all needed activities online with a lot of video call coordination.

The Town's emergency response team is comprised of incredible volunteers, who, according to CERT,  have fostered a lot of creativity over the past 100 days. "Every member has contributed to the success so far and has brought their own capabilities and perspective to improve operations daily.  For that, we're thankful, and the town should be proud," they say.

Because of the need to work everything online, it's a unique time for CERT training as well.  Training requirements are relaxed to allow much faster onboarding of new volunteers.

If you're interested in joining our team to help out now or in the future, or just want to learn more about what CERT does, send an email to certdir@ridgefieldoem.org.

Thanks again to all of our CERT volunteers!

Follow CERT on Facebook HERE for community updates.