Lessons in survival and service

Black Mountain CERT training turns volunteers into vital community resource

Fred McCormick
The Valley Echo
August 7, 2025

David Billstrom, left, and Mike Nolan, right, demonstrate a chair carry technique, Aug. 3, during the inaugural class of the Black Mountain CERT program. Photo by Fred McCormick

The skill sets and professional experiences of the 25 area residents who gathered daily in the Black Mountain Public Safety Training Room, Aug. 1 - 3, varied considerably, but nearly all of them were less than a year removed from enduring and surviving a harrowing natural disaster.

By the conclusion of the 21-hour Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) Basic Training, the inaugural class of the citizen preparedness program, sponsored by the Black Mountain Fire Department, shared another commonality: an organized readiness and willingness to assist local first responders in the event of a future emergency.

Developed in 1985 by the Los Angeles City Fire Department and adopted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) eight years later, the CERT program educates volunteers on disaster preparedness and basic response skills. While at least 80 teams with more than 1,200 volunteers are organized in 57 counties in N.C., the devastation of Tropical Storm Helene brought the need for a local chapter into sharp relief, according to BMFD Liaison to the CERT Program David Billstrom, who led the Black Mountain training.

The municipality launched the local CERT program, which operates within the nonprofit Black Mountain Volunteer Firefighter’s Association and reports to the BMFD, last June, calling it “one of the first Community Emergency Response Teams in Western N.C.”

“FEMA sets the broad guidelines allowing each state to establish its own program, and N.C. does that,” said Billstrom, a Black Mountain resident and longtime volunteer firefighter who has served as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) for over four decades. “To be recognized by Raleigh, there are standard operating guidelines to follow, so when (BMFD Chief John Coffey), the leadership of the Black Mountain Volunteer Firefighters Association and myself were putting this together and discussing it with Town leadership, we decided we wanted to follow best practices. That means all of our members are required to be certified to participate.”

The introductory course was led by the department liaison and four charter members of team: Dr. Wendy Coin, retired Navy SEAL Mike Nolan, Geographic Information System specialist J.D. Jorgensen and communications specialist Borden S. Borden. The class was attended by 25 applicants representing a diverse range of backgrounds and various locations throughout the Black Mountain Fire District.

Members of the initial basic training became probationary members of the team after completing the course, while each has the opportunity to pursue additional instruction before earning designation as a general or responding member.

“Loosely speaking, general members would remain in their neighborhoods, in the event of a disaster, while responding members would move around and help the larger community, likely connected with the fire department,” Billstrom said. “As an example, if we need to carry an injured person off the trails in Montreat, we may have two firefighters and four responding CERT members.”

Both of those roles are significant, according to Dr. Coin, a retired family physician in Asheville who moved to Black Mountain months before Helene.

“I did well in the storm, personally, in the sense that there was no damage to our home, but what I experienced was a feeling of worthlessness,” she said. “Even though I was a well-trained family doctor, my skills weren’t really needed in the Helene response. I was involved with going to our town meetings and helping neighbors, but I felt like there were a lot of disaster response skills that I didn’t have.”

Dr. Coin discovered the state CERT program while researching ways to become involved in disaster response. She attended and completed a training course last January in Wilmington.

Twenty-five area residents attended a two-and-a-half-day Community Emergency Response Team Basic Training, Aug. 1-3, in the Black Mountain Public Safety Training Room. Photo by Fred McCormick

“David is my good friend, but I came upon this concept completely unrelated to him,” she said. “After taking the class, I talked to him about CERT and, of course, he knew all about it. I was disappointed when I got back and found out there were no CERT teams in WNC, but I was thrilled when David told me they were planning to start one in Black Mountain.”

The physician and first responder brought different perspectives to the program.

“What David saw (during Helene) was that our community has all these high-functioning people for disaster response, but they couldn’t be pulled in, officially, to work with the town because of liability issues and a lack of structure for that,” Dr. Coin. “My take was more that CERT needs to be incredibly based upon normal people, spread throughout our community, who can provide leadership in disaster preparedness, communication and light-duty first response within their neighborhoods.”

The Black Mountain CERT embraces both concepts as equally important, she added.

The course curriculum, which includes basic medical training, focuses on “two key pieces,” according to Billstrom.

“One is take care of yourself and your family, because you can’t help others if you’re compromised, even if you’re the most service oriented among us,” he said. “Then, the next step is let’s organize our block, street or neighborhood.”

A key component of the Black Mountain CERT was funded, in part, by an $8,450 grant from the Black Mountain-Swannanoa Valley Community Endowment Fund, allowing for the purchase of two-way radios and the installation of a repeater tower at the peak of Allen Mountain.

“Each members of the team is issued a radio, and those radios are all capable of reaching the repeater, which is easily reachable by the fire station,” Billstrom said. “That way, unlike during Helene, we can hear from and talk to people in individual neighborhoods.”

The information provided in the training, which included sections covering chain of command, radio communication, medical response and search and rescue, was valuable, according to Sue Stigleman, who volunteered at the Black Mountain Pool and Blue Ridge Taekwondo after Helene.

“That was like my initial strategy for coping with the storm, and then I got into preparing, mentally, physically and storing some water and food,” she said. “I found that I didn’t know many people who were doing this, so when I saw the notice for this class I thought these were going to be my people.”

Stigleman was drawn to the CERT program through her interest in learning how to better assist her immediate community during a disaster.

“The training has been excellent,” she said. “Wendy and David have done a great job of allowing space for some of us to share our experiences from Helene and how that applies to what we’re hoping to learn from CERT. It’s long days, but I have not been bored a single minute.”

While Stigleman intends to attend additional training classes, the introductory course provided her with a solid base of knowledge on which to build.

“I feel more confident, because I’ve taken first aid training in the past, but I’ve never really had to use it,” she said. “In this class, they really focused on life-saving care and taught us the difference between comfort kits and supplies needed for potential life-saving treatment.”

The Black Mountain CERT program, sponsored by the Black Mountain Fire Department, trains citizens for disaster preparedness and response. The inaugural class included 25 people, who attended Aug. 1-3. Photo by Fred McCormick

She hopes to become a resource within her neighborhood and help others prepare for future emergencies.

“Before Helene, I knew some very simple things, like the importance of having a supply of water of food,” Stigleman said. “Since then, I’ve learned the importance of getting to know my neighbors. I am a strong introvert, but my experience working in supply hubs and now with this class, I’ve really come to understand the importance of building a strong communication network within your immediate community.”

Growing up in Oklahoma, Marsha Morgan was familiar with the disruption and devastation of tornadoes, and she lived in Loma Prieta, California during the 1989 earthquake that claimed 63 lives and injured nearly 4,000 people. While she had no formal disaster response training, the Ridgecrest resident worked quickly to help area residents after Helene.

“My friend Chris was helping a widowed woman who lived up the mountain from us, taking her water and helping cut away some trees from the road to her house,” Morgan said. “With her up there, I started coming into Swannanoa and Black Mountain and soon after that, we started to delivering supplies to people in the area.”

She was given two hot boxes and began taking meals to isolated neighborhoods around the Swannanoa Valley.

“It felt like the Lord tapped me on my shoulder and said, ‘go to Old Fort,’” Morgan said. “At that point, I drove down there in my little Kia Soul, and the first day I showed up down there I was given the nickname ‘the Chick-Fil-A angel.”

She delivered hot food to storm victims hot food for months after the storm.

“I’m a little bit of a nomad, so I’ve been all over the place, but I have never met people more humble than the people I encountered here,” Morgan said. “I’ll never forget one day that I was driving around and saw a lady in a parking lot. I asked her if she wanted a sandwich and how many people were in her family.

“She told me there were three of them, but the could share one sandwich,” she continued. “I told her I had almost 150 sandwiches with me, and whatever they needed I wanted to give them. I was touched to think how she was thinking of there being enough for others while she herself was hungry.”

Morgan learned about the CERT program on social media and wasted no time before submitting her application.

“One thing that really sticks with me after Helene is that people need comfort,” she said. “I thought this class would help me better understand how to help.”

The diverse perspectives she has encountered in the course reinforces the need for a local CERT program, according to Morgan.

“God bless them for starting this, because I think it will be a big resource for the police and fire departments, and especially the surrounding community,” she said. “To know there are people in your neighborhood trained to assist. If it hadn’t been for people helping other people during this storm, things would have been a lot different. The CERT team is a great way to do that in an organized way with trained citizens right in your neighborhood.”

The charter members of the team plan to open another basic training to 25 people who “live, work or worship” in the Town of Black Mountain around January of 2026.

“When you look back at Helene, we could have had CERT members throughout our community could have been communicating on radios and assessing their neighbors, for both injuries and damage. That would have allowed them to communicate that information with our responding agencies,” Dr. Coin said. “That would have allowed these agencies to target specific areas for response, and enhanced communication to areas further from town, who couldn’t necessarily walk in to get updates.”

The program, according to Billstrom, provides structure to the concept of neighbors helping neighbors.

“It will be a little challenging, but we do take a big tent approach,” he said. “We do need people to help with search and rescue, but we also need people to organize their block, or even pass out water bottles. It was truly amazing to see how this community during Helene, and if we can harness that and give it an extra level of efficiency, that helps everyone be more prepared for the future.”