If Dallas County is ever evacuated during an emergency, 500,000 people are expected to travel up I75 and Hwys 121 and 78 to a little town called Bonham. There it will be the duty of 210 firefighters and a couple dozen peace officers to maintain order while serving the needs of the expanded community. That's a tall enough order when looking after Fannin County's 32,000 citizens alone. Because Fannin County has fewer emergency management resources than all but one Texas county, volunteers from the community will have to rise to the challenge to take care of themselves and neighbors while watching out for potentially dangerous situations.

In order to assist emergency services with the most basic disaster duties, Emergency Management Coordinator Clint Wagstaff won a grant to establish Community Emergency Response Teams (CERTs). After 9/11, CERTs across the country are on the rise, and have more than doubled in Texas. Yet the effectiveness of these groups in rural communities is hardly tested. Fannin County in not only the first community north of McKinney from Wichita Falls the Louisiana border to establish a CERT, it has also become a national guinea pig for rural CERTs.  During the summer, Wagstaff will travel to Baltimore, Maryland and Boise, Idaho to present a program on Fannin County's experience with a rural CERT.

The volunteers who have signed up for CERT in this area are unphased by the eyes sure to be watching their progress. On Tuesday April 13, 2004 they walked into their first training class ready to make new friends, have fun and learn how to better take care of their community. In Fannin County, helping each other in times of need is a standard act of social duty.

With 35 members, this group is the largest initial class ever to begin a CERT in Texas, more than doubling the previous record of 15 volunteers. They are school teachers, nurses, clerks, managers, volunteer firefighters, state employees, salesmen, service providers, administrators and students. One or two are from Lamar and Collin Counties, yet all of their day jobs take them across North Texas, from Dallas to Paris.

This motley crue of volunteers felt perfectly at ease with each other as soon as they sat down to learn. All conversations bubbled with laughter, feeding off each other's desire to help and be pioneers in grassroots security. Over the next eight weeks, the CERT class will learn to battle small fires, basic first aid, search and rescue and disaster psychology. After training, they will take to the community as an established source of safety information and assistance, always ready for the call to serve.

The foundation of the CERT program is to take care of oneself first. Keeping your home and workplace safe of basic hazards, developing emergency plans and having safe rooms enables CERT members, and everyone, to ensure their own safety through prevention and then work with the community as necessary. Already, the Fannin County CERT envisions themselves as providing safety checks for businesses and citizens, working at community events and spreading their growing knowledge of basic emergency procedures. But first, they have seven more classes and one field day to complete.

In all likelihood, Fannin County is going to experience usual disasters like floods and tornadoes before a mass Dallas evacuation. No matter what happens, this CERT and the ones to follow in Fannin County can be on the scene of problems big or small leading families and neighbors through initial periods of danger, and back to times of safety.

In a quick lesson to build fast evaluation and action skills while working with strangers, the CERT volunteers practice building free standing paper towers with limited time and resources.