Asheville launches CERT, volunteers train to help in disasters
Asheville's first CERT class is drawing sign-ups as residents look for a way to help when storms, fires and outages hit. The training is built around Helene lessons.
Asheville residents are signing up for the city’s first official Community Emergency Response Team, a program the Asheville Fire Department launched on April 16 to turn post-disaster anxiety into organized help when the next emergency hits.
The effort is aimed at adults age 18 and older who want to do more than wait for first responders. The city says CERT is coordinated by the Asheville Fire Department with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and is designed to give ordinary residents skills that can support neighborhoods when professional crews are stretched thin.
Participants must complete online classroom modules, attend a one-day hands-on training session and pass a background check. The curriculum includes fire extinguisher use and small fire safety, light search and rescue, basic disaster medical operations, team organization and personal and family preparedness planning.
Asheville tailored the program around local hazards that have become all too familiar in Buncombe County: flooding, severe weather, wildfire and community support operations. City officials say CERT volunteers may help with non-emergency support during incidents, public education outreach, non-technical missing-person search support, and logistics and resource support for partner agencies.
That role has grown more relevant after Helene exposed how quickly local systems can be overwhelmed. Buncombe County said water outages from damage to public water infrastructure significantly slowed immediate emergency response. In the county’s after-action report, Helene was described as one of the nation’s deadliest storms and Buncombe County’s largest catastrophe.
County officials said statewide Helene deaths totaled 106, including 43 in Buncombe County. More than 60% of county properties sustained damage, 372 homes were destroyed and more than 11,000 needed significant repairs. In response, Buncombe County and its six municipal partners adopted a five-year Helene Recovery Plan on Nov. 18, 2025, built around 114 projects and shaped by input from more than 2,600 community members.
The new volunteer program also fits a broader local pattern of residents stepping forward after the storm. United Way of Asheville and Buncombe County said its Helene Volunteer Recruitment Center drew 355 drop-in volunteers in three weeks, and those volunteers contributed 1,742 hours of service.
For Asheville, CERT is becoming part of the city’s longer recovery shift: build more local capacity, train more neighbors to help, and make sure the first hours of a disaster do not depend only on professional responders.
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