WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) – For the first time, New Hanover County is offering Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training to Spanish speakers. Training took place July 12-14.

The Community Emergency Response Team is a group of volunteers who can care for others in the case of an emergency, such as when first responders are too busy or unavailable.

Mari McKenzie is the language access coordinator for the office of diversity and equity in New Hanover County.

She says the importance of this training goes beyond just emergency response. It addresses the language barrier and cultural understanding, making it easier for Spanish-speaking residents to seek and offer help.

“A lot of times in the case of an emergency, when you’re nervous, your first language is what you want to hear,” McKenzie said.

McKenzie says the county is in need of more Spanish speakers who can assist in communities where there are high populations of Hispanics and Latinos.

“We found that in other events that we’ve had like Florence, there was a lack of resources for our Spanish speaking community, so we want to make sure that we’re prepared,” McKenzie said.

Claudia Newton decided to become a volunteer because she says it’s important for the Latino community to be aware of how they can help others in the case of a disaster.

She’s one of about 15 volunteers who spent more than two days learning everything from how to respond to medical disasters to hurricanes as well as hands-on techniques.

“We had to learn to do it the right way, in order to be able to help people sometimes to help themselves save lives,” Newton said.

Lourdes (Lulu) Miranda is one of the course instructors.

She says one of the goals of the course is to create more opportunities for Spanish speaking residents to get help.

“The important thing is about the language barrier and the understanding that we don’t seek for help, but if we use speak the same language, they give them more opening to for us to assist them,” Miranda said.

Miranda says the goal is for this group to go home and pass on this training to family members, neighbors and friends so the community as a whole will be more prepared.

The training was a collaboration between the New Hanover County Office of Equity and Diversity and New Hanover County EMS.

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