Tag Archives: CERT

Congratulations to Belmar, NJ’s first CERT team

Belmar, New Jersey has just graduated its first CERT class, and has started to recruit a second. Belmar, sensibly, takes an approach that makes it easy for participants to complete the one night per week/eight week program, apparently also providing gear rather than making new volunteers find their own (and, alas, often get fleeced in the process). The next class will start in the fall – anyone interested can contact the CERT head, Dennis Ryan on this page.

Interestingly, Belmar has added CPR and defibrillation to the curriculum, not normally part of the standard program (on the assumption that CPR and defib are best used when there is an expectation of imminent hospital and/or ALS ambulance care – often absent in mass casualty incidents.

We note that with its first class of 27, if it graduates and holds four equal-sized classes, Belmar will equal San Francisco in per capita participation in CERT/NERT by citizens and residents.

State to State comparisons – CERT team numbers by population

Our first experiment at displaying data in this way. NB: ((Nota Bene, or “take note” – Lat.))

  1. This is data reported to FEMA by the states – or directly by local administrators;
  2. We know nothing from this data of size, effectiveness, equipment, capabilities of CERT teams
  3. Other volunteer organizations – volunteer ambulance corps, fire departments, and other groups, like The 3 Steps – wouldn’t be reported here anyway.

With those caveats – based on current FEMA data:


State Population served per team
New Jersey 20,437
Wyoming 29,046
Mississippi 31,726
North Dakota 31,986
Rhode Island 36,477
Maine 36,589
Utah 37,790
South Dakota 39,811
Missouri 41,108
Massachusetts 46,401
Vermont 47,789
Total 31,161
Idaho 55,533
Texas 57,325
New Hampshire 69,254
Oregon 76,479
Kansas 81,647
Iowa 85,373
North Carolina 87,971
Florida 89,030
Kentucky 90,244
Washington 95,124
Connecticut 103,009
Oklahoma 106,392
Montana 106,429
Tennessee 111,940
West Virginia 113,252
Louisiana 116,033
Ohio 118,216
South Carolina 119,127
Michigan 122,827
Arkansas 123,252
Indiana 129,496
Arizona 132,057
Alaska 136,696
California 145,052
Minnesota 157,504
Alabama 159,581
Nebraska 161,325
Virginia 175,275
Georgia 207,495
Colorado 231,501
Maryland 255,379
New Mexico 281,416
Nevada 285,042
Illinois 313,477
Hawaii 427,796
New York 438,585
District of Columbia 588,292
Pennsylvania 592,038
Puerto Rico 657,063
Wisconsin 800,234
Delaware 864,764

Many thanks to Dannny Sanchez and his excellent table-to-html tool, Tableizer.