What CERT Training Actually Teaches You (And Why I Think Every Homeowner in a Fire Zone Should Take It)
I get asked about hose kits, nozzles, and valves all day — that's the business. But the single piece of advice I give homeowners that has nothing to do with anything Ace Fire Defense sells is this: take a CERT class. After the 2018 Woolsey Fire burned through the hills near my home in West Hills, going through CERT training is what actually changed how I think about wildfire risk, years before it turned into a business. It's free in most cities, it takes a few evenings, and almost nobody I talk to has taken it.
What the CERT Curriculum Actually Covers
CERT stands for Community Emergency Response Team, and it's a FEMA-certified curriculum that local fire departments and county offices of emergency management run for free, usually as a handful of evening or weekend classes over a few weeks. The core topics are the same everywhere, because the curriculum itself is standardized nationally: disaster preparedness, basic disaster fire safety, light search and rescue, disaster medical operations, team organization, and disaster psychology. None of it requires a background in anything — it's built for regular residents, not first responders.
The fire safety module specifically covers things most homeowners never get taught anywhere else: how fire actually spreads through a structure, how to size up a situation before you act, when a small fire is still safe to address and when it absolutely isn't, and basic extinguisher and utility shutoff skills. It's the same base knowledge that makes the difference between someone who freezes when something starts smoking and someone who already knows the next three steps.
Where CERT and Home Equipment Fit Together
I don't think of CERT training and having the right equipment as two separate projects — they're the same project. A hose, a gated valve, and a wrench that fits your neighborhood's hydrant are useless if you don't know how to size up whether it's even safe to use them in the moment, and CERT is where you learn that judgment. Equipment without the training is just gear in a garage. Training without equipment is knowing exactly what you'd do if only you had something to do it with.
CERT also builds something equipment alone can't: a working relationship with your neighbors and your local fire department before you ever need one. Most CERT programs organize graduates into neighborhood teams, so the people on your block aren't strangers during an evacuation — they're people you trained with. On a bad wind-driven fire day, that coordination matters as much as anything in a hose kit.
What You Need to Know
- CERT is run locally, usually through your city or county fire department or office of emergency management. Search "[your city] CERT training" or call your local fire department's non-emergency line to find the next session.
- It's typically free and runs as a series of evening or weekend classes over a few weeks, not a single long session.
- You don't need any prior experience. The curriculum is built for residents with zero background in emergency response.
- Graduates often join a standing neighborhood CERT team that trains together and coordinates during real emergencies — this is as much a community-building step as a skills one.
- CERT training supplements evacuation, it doesn't replace it. Nothing in the curriculum is about staying to fight a fire that authorities have ordered you to leave.
- Pair the training with the equipment. Knowing what to do and having a functioning hose, valve, and wrench staged and ready are two different problems — solve both.
Of everything I've done since Woolsey, taking the CERT class is the one thing I'd tell every homeowner in a fire-risk zone to do first, before they buy anything from me or anyone else. It's free, it's local, and it's the knowledge that makes the equipment actually useful instead of just reassuring.
Sherwin Ross is the founder of Ace Fire Defense, based in West Hills, CA. After the 2018 Woolsey Fire, he became CERT-trained and started building wildfire defense equipment for homeowners.