Fair Educates Public on What to do When Danger Strikes

Spectators flooded the parking lot at in Capitola to partake in life-saving demonstrations during the fourth-annual Dangers in Paradise fair on Saturday.

The fair, which educates the public on disaster-preparedness, is sponsored by Santa Cruz County's Community Emergency Response Team, along with several county fire agencies, and included six separate skill stations educating attendees on how to be self-sufficient when disaster strikes.

“September is National Disaster Preparedness Month, so we're trying to get folks aware of what kind of dangers we face living here in paradise, and how to prevent or prepare to deal with them when they happen, whether they be man-made or natural disasters,” said the Central Fire Protection District's Mike DeMars, who coordinated the event.

Scotts Vally, Watsonville and Aptos/La Selva were some of the fire departments on scene, along with several law enforcement agencies, the Red Cross, Salvation Army, the Amateur Radio Emergency Service and CERT personnel.

Some of the skill stations included hands-on demonstrations detailing proper first aid, search and rescue, how to extinguish a fire and cribbing, a technique used to rescue people who've become trapped under objects.

“The basic principles behind cribbing are to teach a student how to safely and accurately build up a wall that's fallen on a victim, and stabilize the wall so they can safely extract the victim, and they do it with short pieces of wood or anything they can find around the incident,” said Ed Banks, an instructor for the Watsonville CERT program and former reserve firefighter for the city of Watsonville.

Search-and-rescue demonstrations were explained by Mike Conrad of the Aptos/La Selva Fire Protection District, who said the first step in a search and rescue operation is to turn off all outside utilities, such as electric and gas.

“They're teaching a systematic approach to searching a building,” Conrad said. “You don't just go in and start walking around. You actually go in one way and you work your way around a room, say in a clockwise manner, so you hit all the areas in a room. Then you come back to where you started and you go to the next room and do the same thing.”

DeMars said an additional purpose of the event was to offer some refreshed training to individuals who have gone through the CERT program, which trains members of the community to deal with natural disasters and sustain themselves for three-day periods—the time  it can take emergency personnel to reach people in distress when a major disaster has occurred.

Using the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake as an example, DeMars said it's important that people learn how to self-sustain for a period of time, because the chances of being rescued are diminished when emergency services are already overwhelmed with a natural disaster.

“We figured that if you can prepare yourself, prepare your family and prepare your neighborhood to be self-sustaining for about three days, that you can take care of yourself for a time period, so then eventually we would have made our way to you, and provide you with whatever service you need,” he said.

For information on how to become part of the certified emergency response team, visit its website.