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We had some great guests speak at the training including Chris Geldart, the Director of the District’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, as well as Neil McDevitt, a former FEMA employee, firefighter and Gallaudet alum.

There were numerous guests in attendance because this was a pretty special event: the first CERT training in ASL in the District of Columbia.

The CERT training included several unique components: the facilitators added 3 specific focus groups, one per day, to explore how the emergency management community and the deaf and hard of hearing community can communicate better before, during and after a crisis. There were three focus groups–one for the hearing participants, one for deaf and hard of hearing participants, and one for the interpreters. Each of these sessions were video taped and quite well received by all involved.

The entire CERT training was also video taped!

Participants in the conference let it be known what they wanted to learn in our 3 days together.

Day one we also talked about how this CERT will be utilized in the future.

Throughout the training, attention was given to the unique challenges associated with the deaf and hard of hearing community in a crisis and how the first response organizations can be better informed to understand those unique challenges.

As part of the training, participants were encouraged to tweet and learn more social media tools. We had a few converts!

Why social media?

Social Media is an important skill for everyone to understand since it provides redundancy in methods of communication. We discussed both where to find information as well as how to provide information. We even delved into the use of hashtags and the kind of content CERT members should tweet during a crisis to provide situational awareness information to first responders and the campus crisis leadership team.

Other technologies were also mentioned–even from people just watching the twitter stream.

One of the great presentations was from Chris Littlewood from the St. Petersburg College National Terrorism Preparedness Institute. Chris is a late-deafened adult who chose to learn sign language in order to connect with the deaf community.

We loved seeing the participants start tweeting the event, including this snapshot from the audience.

One of the most interesting demonstrations was from DC Firefighter Fred Gordon when he tried to communicate with a deaf “victim” without the aid of an interpreter.

Mr. Gordon came up with all kinds of motions in order to get his point across; the two of them worked out a ‘thumbs-up thumbs-down’ system for very basic communication. His statement after the exercise was “I need to learn some sign language!”

There was also a lot of discussion around the buddy system move, demonstrated by firefighters on day three, for use when deploying a fire extinguisher.

By the end of day three, the event was over and everyone felt as if it was a successful training. Anytime everyone in the room leaves feeling like they learned something, the event should be deemed a success!