In most areas of the country are public work employees or town, city, county employees  part of public safety?  Do they get training like CERT to help the regular public safety employees like the fire, ems or police in the event of a emergency.

 Do they have to take any FEMA required training or classes?

 

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In my city public works personnel do the basic ICS courses needed, but don't respond to emergencies, unless called. For instance there is a public works person on call and we had a significant accident with fluids leaking, where public works had to supply more sand and did clean up.
In our city all public work employees must take the basic NIMS classes an the Dept heads must have the upper level classes. They are not part of the public safety process however, we will work with them or visa versa on a situation where necessary. They could be CERT trained if they chose to do that but it is not mandatory part of our city.
Some of the cities around here (Texas) have in fact offered cross-training to their public works employees on a voluntary basis. Anyone who responds to or assists with emergencies must have the basic FEMA ICS courses.
I could be wrong, but I believe Public Works, County Employees, and the like are required to have NIMS training under HSPD-5. There are specific ICS classes for Public Works, Teachers, etc. In times of disaster, or large incidents, they would become part of an overall Incident Action Plan.

I'm not sure a local government would require CERT training, but I suppose they could. But I would think that the local government employee status, (utilities, sanitation, road and bridge) would be doing infrastructure functions, and let the civilian CERT volunteers assist as they are trained to do.
I worked for Public Safety for my town not too long ago. The only two classes we were mandated to take were the Security Guard certification and Defensive Driving.

I believe they should teach a class on how to efficiently work with emergency services and what to do in an emergency situation, but they don't.

Right now I work for the county and I didn't have to take any classes, either. But this is a desk job, I'm not out in the field too often.
As a thought what other groups should have CERT or ICS or some emergency training to better their use to public safety? Even people who spend their time sitting at a desk should have some sort of training. I figure since Andrew is involved in a volunteer dept. he should be better trained than his fellow employees around him.
You might want to consider any heavy construction companies (building, road construction) or steel worker/erector companies as they typically have at their disposal cranes, bucket loaders, excavators, etc along with trained operators and construction workers.

CERT's are designed to "assist" residents in fending for themselves until emergency services arrive (think Loma Prieta and hurricane katrina). Mostly along the lines of 'stay away from downed power lines, gas lines, collapsed buildings, etc. "Training" is classroom and minimal, they are a disparate group of people that typically have no trade skills and are older/retired (my experience with them at least).
NIMS is mandated under the National Response Plan to include by fiscal 2006, "Adopted NIMS for all government departments and agencies;" FEMA.gov

Public Works being a branch of a local or tribal government, is required to have basic NIMS training.



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