Get Involved !

Just want to get acquainted ?

Have a look at our About page. You might also want to check out our Youtube channel.

We also have a presence every year at various town events such as the Portola Valley Town Picnic, Zotts To Tots race, Woodside Day of the Horse and more. You can always find all our events in the calendar, or sign up for email notification of events on groups.io.

If our CERT program seems like more involvement than you can handle right now, please consider getting your family and household prepared using our WPV-Ready program resources. And in any case, you should 100% sign up for SMCAlert which will put any San Mateo County emergency information alerts on your phone.

Ready to roll ?

First things first: sign up for Winter or Fall Basic Training Class. This will get you ready and badged for activation and deployment. Join us on Slack for local discussion topics on training, protocols, tools, radios etc.

We recommend you also complete the free FEMA ICS 100 and ICS 700 online classes to become more familiar with the Incident Command System and the roles various people and groups play (this is a nationwide system trained and understood by 1st responders, police, fire, FEMA, CERTs, Red Cross, etc.)

We also recommend you take a First Aid / CPR / AED class provided by the American Red Cross. They have several in San Jose, cost is about $35.  If you also like to hike or camp anyway, you might consider Wilderness First Aid instead, for example through The Sierra Club. These go into more detail as they prepare you for dealing with emergencies while 1st responders may be hours or days away.

Once you have completed basic training, you can also purchase a CERT radio (which we recommend)

Stay involved !

Weekly Radio Checks

Monthly trailer days

Monthly meeting series

Upgrade to Incident Management Team

Join the monthly CERT committee meetings to learn more about our strategic plans or provide ideas and feedback

Do you have special skills ? Whether radio, medical, logistics, organizational, IT - if you are willing to help, we'd love to volunteer you for a more specific role/responsibility to uplevel our team's competences !