In November and December, as cases of COVID were on the rise, the Bristol Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) were deployed to assist the Bristol Community Health Center (CHC) with COVID testing.
In order to streamline the process for the community and to reduce traffic issues on North Main Street, a staging area was created in an empty parking lot in downtown which the Bristol CERT team assisted with and manned for 30 days straight from late November to late December – CHC performed 3,600 COVID tests here in Bristol and over 675,000 statewide.
To recognize their efforts, Amy Taylor, Eastern Regional Vice President for CHC and Gary Wallace, Director of Community Engagement for CHC recently presented a check for $2,500 to CERT.
Mayor Ellen Zoppo-Sassu and Harley Graime, Director of Emergency Management for the City of Bristol, were on hand for the check presentation and to commend the CERT team for their efforts in assisting the Community Health Center to administer the COVID tests to help keep the Bristol community safe.
“The CERT team’s efforts during this pandemic are to be commended. The City of Bristol is grateful for the volunteers who make up CERT,” stated Harley Graime, Director of Emergency Management for the City of Bristol. “In addition to assisting with COVID testing in partnership with the Community Health Center, the CERT team assisted with food distribution in partnership with the Bristol Board of Education in the early days of the pandemic and was in charge of traffic control for the COVID vaccine point of distribution at ESPN North campus on various days throughout this past April.”
CERT is comprised of volunteer citizens, who are trained in basic life safety and emergency preparedness skills. The program is community based in order to provide rapid and safe care for Bristol’s residents and to provide support to the City’s emergency personnel in the event of a major incident or large scale disaster.
The Bristol CERT team has made Shelter Administration its primary focus as a means of building team and community awareness, trust and reliability. The team has and will continue further training in order to provide residents and first responders with the most effective support. It also focuses on public education in order to increase the emergency preparedness of all residents in the community.
If you are a Bristol resident and interested in becoming part of the CERT team, you can learn more at https://www.bristolcert.com.