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The theory behind CERT is based on a simple observation: In major emergencies, professional emergency services overload instantly. Every area in the world has earthquakes and tornadoes, and the most common disasters are floods and severe storms. Common mass emergencies include flood, hurricane, tsunami or earthquake. These are all able to create mass emergencies, and thus CERTs have a mission everywhere.
For example, in a city with 100,000 people, usually only 5 fire stations and two police stations are staffed, with perhaps 40 firefighters, ten fire trucks and thirty police on duty. This is adequate for normal emergencies, rescues and crimes. In normal rescues, rescuers outnumber victims four to one, and can respond in minutes. A typical rescue is completed in a half hour.
In the above community, if a mass emergency traps or injures just two percent of the inhabitants, there are instantly 2,000 victims, many with injuries. The telephones will fail from overload. Roads, bridges, electricity and other services may fail, hampering emergency services, and interfering with fuel and material supplies.
Say that only professionals respond to that mass emergency. Take 2000 victims. divide by 0.5 hours per rescue. The result is 1000 hours of rescues, divided by ten trucks, or about 100 hours. As many as three quarters of the victims could die while waiting for rescue. After an hour and a half, untreated victims of shock would begin to die. After one day, trapped children would begin to die of thirst. After two days, trapped adults and shut-ins would begin to die of thirst. Most of these deaths could be prevented by simple rescue and first-aid procedures. This is a heartbreaking situation for all concerned.
In these environments CERTs are far more effective than untrained civilians. With less than 40 hours of training, an amateur disaster service worker becomes qualified to perform about 95% of needed emergency services. This means that 95% of the rescues and life-saving triage and first-aid procedures can be completed in the "golden day," the first 24 hours when rescues and first-aid are most likely to succeed.
Physical fitness is not required for most CERT training or emergency activities. CERT members are instead trained to avoid hazards, and assign strenuous tasks to younger or fit members of the team.
In a major emergency, the community needs mass emergency services. Although amateurs are not able to work as skillfully as professionals, they are immensely better than nothing.
A local government, usually a city, divides its territory into neighborhoods. It then attempts to recruit a CERT in each neighborhood. Most governments with CERTs maintain a full-time community-service person as liaison to the volunteers that perform much of the rest of the organization.
CERTs provide their own personnel, supplies, tools, organization and equipment, but they are activated by, trained by, promoted by and liaise with the government. They are temporary volunteer government workers, usually organized as auxiliaries to the fire department. In some areas, (such as California) during declared disasters, registered, activated CERT members are eligible for worker's compensation for on-the-job injuries.
A CERT consists of a neighborhood leader, block leaders, street teams, and specialist teams for search-and-rescue, triage and first aid, planning, communication, logistics, and shelter.
The city directly liaises with the neighborhood CERT leader through the CERT's organic communication team. In wealthy areas the communications may be by amateur radio, or dedicated telephone or fire-alarm networks. In poor areas, relays of bicycle-equipped runners can effectively carry mail between the districts and the city's emergency operations center.
The CERT's block leaders and street teams provide truly local organization with in-depth local knowledge that can quickly locate shut-ins and injured persons and dangers, and liase between the neighborhood's people and professional emergency workers. They take the information back to the neighborhood leader, who assigns persons to the needs of the moment.
In the short term, CERTs perform data gathering, especially to locate mass-casualties requiring professional response, or situations requiring professional rescues, simple fire-fighting tasks (e.g. small fires, turning off gas), light search and rescue, damage evaluation of structures, triage and first aid. In a slightly longer term, they evacuate injured people (using local vehicles, in an organized triaged fashion), and set up a neighborhood shelter and tent-city for food, sanitation and sleeping, usually in a local park.