Joyce Johnson, a member of the Greenbrier City Council, said she took a community emergency-response-team class in the fall through the Faulkner County Office of Emergency Management because she thought the information might come in handy if a tornado hit the community.
She talked to Greenbrier Fire Chief Cody Fulmer about creating such a city team, and he was interested.
“Then we had the flood,” Johnson said.
On April 29 and 30, record rainfall flooded the state and Faulkner County. The Greenbrier Gardens apartments flooded and had to be evacuated.
In June, the Greenbrier City Council gave its blessing for the Greenbrier Fire Department
to recruit volunteers for the Community Emergency Response Team.
Fire Chief Cody Fulmer said he has asked Annette Gartman of Greenbrier, a nurse, to be the team leader. An organizational meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. July 13 at the Greenbrier Fire Station, 6 N. Broadview St.
“This CERT program is going to be a great deal,” Fulmer said. “It all spun off the Greenbrier
Gardens flooding. We jumped in there and evacuated close to 30 elderly individuals out of there.”
Johnson said she and her husband also waded through waist-deep water to reach her 88-year-old father, who lives there.
Fulmer said the residents were taken by bus to the Melton Cotton City Event Center and were assured they’d receive hot coffee and blankets.
“We really didn’t have the people we needed to be caring for those people, as we were continuing with our emergency services,” he said. “We had some of the firefighter wives and people who just came in to do what they could, and also some employees of Greenbrier Gardens and the event center.”
If the city had a community disaster-response team, “we realized we had a group of volunteers who would be there with these older people and put a blanket around them and care for them, and we wouldn’t be pulling from our professional staffed crew for nonemergencies.”
He said the response-team members could have helped with minor cuts and abrasions and given the residents “a little compassion.”
“My 26 guys were out there in the water. They do the rough stuff, and we’re not smooth operators, you know. We handle the major emergencies. When it comes to the finesse work, we’re not the best,” he said, laughing.
He also said such a disaster-response team could help with accountability in situations like the evacuation, “to make sure it is a true family member coming to pick [the residents] up.”
Because Faulkner County was included in the federal disaster declaration, “it was a tremendous amount of paperwork we had to complete that night,” Fulmer said.
The Greenbrier Fire Department will provide in-house training for team members as much as possible, Fulmer said.
“We’re going to work with them a lot on training. My guys get top-notch training from the Fire Academy,” he said.
Fulmer is a CPR trainer, and he said response-team members will be CPR-certified.
“I anticipate having two major trainings a year and probably two minor trainings,” he said. Training could also include online training through the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Classes are also sponsored by the Faulkner County OEM. Its director, Shelia Bellott, said classes are held at different locations.
“They could very well be the first city to form a city team,” she said of Greenbrier, adding that she isn’t aware of another one in Faulkner County.
Fulmer said members will be taught the city’s emergency-response plan, in case there is a need to go door to door to evacuate residents or inspect homes for damage.
“We cover a 66-square-mile
radius. If we get a natural disaster, we’re going to be spread pretty thin. We can put the CERT team in a nonhazardous area,” Fulmer said.
He said each team member will receive first-responder “jump bags,” and he plans to seek donations from businesses and community organizations to pay for them.
“We want it to be where these people have nice, protective equipment to take care of them,” he said. “We don’t want them to be embarrassed about what we give them.”
Fulmer said items in the bag will include a “construction-type
helmet,” eye protection, a mask to protect volunteers from mold or “anything that would hurt their lungs,” good safety gloves and “a safety vest like what you’d see on the Highway Department [workers] on the side of the road.”
Johnson said that through her Faulkner County Office of Emergency Management training, she learned basic first aid, “how to set splints, things like that, until the main medical team gets there.
“Initially, we’re going to lean pretty heavy on them,” Fulmer said, while his personnel are trained to do the CERT training and stand on their own.
“We’re not going to be doing swift-water rescue, … just basic disaster response, how to check on your neighbors. It may be an instance to where a medical or search and rescue cannot get to your area, but as a neighborhood, you want to make sure everybody you can get to, you want them accounted for.”
She said her training included how to evaluate whether a structure is safe for a search and how to check to see if utilities are turned off.
“It’s just basic common knowledge. They teach you how to use a fire extinguisher, which I’m 61 years old, and I’d never had a fire extinguisher in my hand,” she said.
Johnson said she plans to sign up for the team, along with her two sisters and other relatives.
“It’s been received very well,” Fulmer said. “I’m expecting there to be 30 members, but I don’t know. There are currently 279 likes on our Facebook page, so there’s a good chance we’re going to have a pretty-good-sized team.
“We’re covering anywhere the school district is, which runs hand in hand with the fire district,” he said. He said the areas the response team will cover might also include smaller communities such as Guy and Twin Groves.
“Like I told the council, not everybody wants to wear turnout gear and crawl in a fire or carry a gun to work and wear a vest, but everybody wants to help in an emergency and be there for their fellow man,” he said. “Maybe they’re not able to do the hard work, but they want to do something.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.