When "the big one" hits, there's at least one group of East Contra Costa residents who don't plan on sitting around waiting for the fire department to show up -- and they're looking for recruits.
Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) volunteer trainees are taught how to survive and protect their neighborhoods if emergency services are unable to respond quickly in a crisis, if, say, they are overwhelmed by the major earthquake experts predict will hit the Bay Area within the next 25 years.
"If the Hayward Fault was to crack, it would probably affect us even out here," said John Rinaudo, 65, a CERT organizer who lives in the Delta Hawaii Mobile Home Park in Pittsburg.
"The concern is that if there was a huge quake like that, and trees and poles and whatnot fell into the streets, then ambulances and the fire department could not get to us, so we need to be self-sustaining."
Training sessions start Monday at Delta Hawaii's community room at 875 Stoneman Ave. Classes are 6:30 to 10 p.m. one day a week for six weeks, and include disaster preparedness, terrorism awareness, search and rescue, fire suppression, disaster psychology and "cribbing" -- pulling fallen walls and other massive objects off people trapped underneath.
For information, visit www.eastcountycert.webs.com, or call 925-698-7533. Participants are asked to R.S.V.P. as police will be providing snacks. No one will be turned away.
Contact Sean Maher at 925-779-7189. Follow him on Twitter at @OneSeanMaher.