Citizen Helpers Are Ready . . . And Waiting

The sub shop worker held out a heavy-looking gray backpack. "Is this yours?" she asked.

Sitting at one of the restaurant's tables, Thomas G. Smith suddenly looked worried. Stocky and short-haired, he stepped toward the shop worker and asked her to put the bag down. Then he carefully looked inside.

It was a false alarm. The bag contained books, not a bomb.

Smith, 48, isn't a policeman or a terrorism expert. But he is the president of Montgomery County's volunteer Community Emergency Response Training team, or CERT, so he tries to keep himself prepared for calamity. Opportunities to serve are few. "We're waiting for the call," he said.

He also tries not to get in the way of the county's crisis responders: its police and fire and rescue personnel.

Sitting back down in the sub shop, he seemed a little bashful. He nodded in the direction of two men at another table, one with "FIRE MARSHAL" emblazoned on the back of his shirt. "I wouldn't have done that if I'd seen they were here," Smith said.

Such is the balancing act of a citizen trained for crisis in Montgomery County. Since 2003, the county has spent $150,000 in federal grants, with another $20,000 in the pipeline, to train fewer than 100 residents in how to respond to a crisis in accordance with guidelines set out by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The events of September 2001 added momentum to Montgomery's efforts to train residents in a variety of emergency skills, including first aid, suppressing small fires and assessing a dangerous situation.

But county officials are wondering how to keep volunteers engaged and prepared. "The real question," said Gordon A. Aoyagi, director of Montgomery's new Department of Homeland Security, "is how do we sustain the level of interest and training when you don't have that many disasters?"

The county has two other networks of volunteers ready to act in case of crisis. One is the Emergency Action Team, a group formed four years ago at a time of heightened concern over West Nile virus. Now the group consists of residents who stand ready to help out with small but important tasks, such as filling a prescription for a homebound person during severe weather or helping out at an emergency shelter.

With about 55 active members, the group has helped answer county phones during snowstorms and distribute dry ice during a power outage, said Andrea Jolly, director of the county's volunteer center.

Another group is Montgomery's year-old Medical Reserve Corps, another county response to the terrorist attacks of 2001. The corps is a network of some 400 licensed medical professionals who are ready to help out in a large-scale health crisis.