Sacramento CERT Command & Rehab Trailer

Sacramento CERT is a volunteer program of the Sacramento Fire Department. Community Emergency Response Teams train citizens in disaster preparedness and response to create more resilient communities and help mitigate the effects of disasters.

Sacramento CERT trains above and beyond FEMA guidelines and can assist first responders across California for up to 2 weeks at a time. Sacramento CERT members have responded to aid requests for the Rim Fire, Valley Fire, Camp Fire, multiple missing person searches, flood response, and many other incidents.

Sacramento CERT recently received grant funding from CalOES to purchase a 20' box trailer. This unit has roof mounted air conditioning / heating, an on-board generator, area lighting and shade canopy, and other features that makes it a very good base for a Command / Communications / Rehab trailer. Sacramento CERT is seeking donations to complete the interior build out of this trailer to serve those functions.

Fire services budgets have been strained in recent years, and the mantra of "do more with less" creates tough choices for fire agencies. On average, 90% of budgets go to personnel costs, and 5-7% go to equipment budgets. Even small decreases in funding lead to large impacts on abilities of fire agencies to meet the needs of the public. CERT programs help where they can (managing medical coverage for public events, etc.), but with tight budgets in fire services, CERT programs often don't receive enough money to make a real impact when it comes to equipment.

This means the more capabilities a single piece of apparatus has, the more impact it will have on it's sponsor agencies (and by extension, agencies that ask for mutual aid).

This trailer will be able to support firefighters as a firefighter rehab unit during long fires, as a communications center during large scale disasters, and as a command/operations unit for CERT deployments across California.

Donations to this fundraiser will go to purchasing the items needed to build out the interior of this trailer (struts, wood for cabinets and work surfaces, cushions for seating firefighters during rehab, mounts for monitors and computer screens, etc. to take this 'empty' trailer and create a working space for 3-4 command/communication staff or up to 6 firefighters and a paramedic during rehab operations.

Due to material shortages as a result of COVID, delivery of the trailer has been delayed until around December of 2021. We are using this extra time to seek donations to purchase materials in advance of delivery. This will enable us to immediately begin building out the interior of the trailer as soon as we take delivery. We are hoping to have this trailer fully operational in January of 2022.

Thank you for your consideration of our fundraiser, and for your continued support of first responders!

UPDATE: COVID delays persisted and delayed delivery of our trailer further. Finally, on June 20, 2022, our trailer arrived from the manufacturer! Currently the City of Sacramento Fleet office is processing the required paperwork, conducting safety inspections, and all of the other mandatory work required before a new asset can be put into service. We are still gathering up a list of items for install to convert this 'bare' trailer to a fully functioning Command, Communications and Rehab unit.

We are still seeking funding to help with this project, primarily to purchase hardware to be used (fold-up seating on the passenger side, overhead cabinets on the driver side, fold-up work surfaces on the driver side, monitors and docks for the workstations, tie down track upgrades (upgrading the "E" track to "X" track), etc.  Our aim is to work with Fleet and get this trailer operational to use this fire season.

You can send questions about this campaign to [email redacted].

Thank you in advance for reading our story!

Robert Ross
Chief, Operations
Sacramento Fire CERT