Help yourself and your neighborhood - Join the Neighborhood Team Program

March 22, 2011

The Neighborhood Team Program (NTP) is a new emergency support program organized through CERT – the Community Emergency Response Team program. In the city of Los Angeles, CERT is administered by the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) which also provides CERT training.

At this point, NTP is a pilot program. Volunteers who have taken the CERT training have volunteered to be Team Leaders to organize their neighborhoods to be better prepared in advance and to act in event of an emergency. This especially applies to large-scale emergencies, such as a major earthquake. In a case like this, public safety agencies will have to prioritize their responses and are not likely to be available to help communities whose situation may be serious, but not as critical as others.

Under the NTP, Team Leaders are recruiting volunteers, both CERT-trained and not, to become part of a Neighborhood Team. There will be some very basic training and exercises to prepare and organize volunteers into a team. This program will also help spread the word about general preparedness for emergencies.

In Mid City West, the NTP can include any and all stakeholders. Of course residents should be prepared and can be volunteers in the NTP, but also business-owners, employees and others who spend a lot of time in the area can be better organized since we never know when something might happen.

Whether you have completed the CERT training or not, please consider becoming part of the Neighborhood Team program. It's a way to help yourself, your family and your neighborhood in preparation for and in the event of a large-scale emergency.

For information about signing up for the Mid City West area, contact ntp@midcitywest.org.