The Disaster Service Worker Volunteer Program provides workers' compensation for injuries sustained as a volunteer and also provides limited immunity from liability.

NOTE - Avoid latex products whenever possible.
You don't need to be dealing with a severe allergic reaction on top of everything else.  There are some very nice synthetic gloves.  Nitrile is almost always a good choice.  If you, personally, have very sensitive skin, you might do best with the Synsation brand of vinyl gloves used by dermatologists.

During an Earthquake

Drop, Cover, and Hold On!  vs. "The Triangle of Life"

Snopes on the "The Triangle of Life"

General Preparedness Information

The Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program educates volunteers about disaster preparedness for the hazards that may impact their area and trains them in basic disaster response skills, such as fire safety, light search and rescue, team organization, and disaster medical operations.

I've been poking around online trying to find a good list of medical supplies that would be most useful to a neighborhood disaster preparedness team.  Here's a Neighborhood Association CERT Supply List that is a really good place to start.

USGS publication Putting Down Roots in Earthquake Country - learn more about preparing for an earthquake or living in earthquake country

Along the way, I collected some information that may be helpful:

These Trauma Unit Kits give you a sense of the quantities of supplies you'll need to treat 50, 100, 500 or 1000 people.

The Sept. 2009 OVMNA Newsletter had a nice piece on earthquake preparedness with basic supplies lists.
You can search for earthquake related articles here. [Sadly, I can't find these as of Sept., 2016, so here's a reasonable supplies list from ABAG.]

Disaster Preparedness and Purifying Water from Clorox - Note that you should use only Regular or Concentrated-Regular bleach.

www.sf72.org - An excellent resource for getting started with preparedness

California Office of Emergency Services' "Organizing Neighborhoods for Earthquake Preparedness" [an Acrobat document]

The Community Preparedness Website Project

Yerba Buena Neighborhood Earthquake Preparedness Program

Preparing For Emergencies: A Consumer’s Guide from Penn State

Palo Alto Neighborhoods' Emergency Preparedness Information and Emergency Preparedness Resources

The CERT-Los Angeles homepage has some good links:
S.T.A.R.T. - Simple Triage And Rapid Treatment - A great description of principles and steps for effective Triage
(The Search and Rescue team may be interested in the links on "Lifts and Carries".)  It would be a great idea to print this out and laminate it for each trauma kit.

Planning for Natural Disasters from SBC & AT&T
 

Sources of Medical Supplies

My personal favorite source is Moore Medical - great prices!

Dixie EMS Supply is also good.

Supply houses specializing in earthquake preparedness supplies will probably be overpriced, but they'll have good suggestions for necessary supplies and may offer some supplies not available elsewhere:

Disaster Stuff is a leading supplier of Disaster Equipment, Emergency Supplies, and Survival Kits

Emergency Resources

Checklist - A Poor Man's Emergency Preparedness Guide (this actually has a list! of medical supplies that would be most appropriate for home use and maybe for low-level neighborhood supplies)

Emergency and Disaster Supplies - http://www.emergencyanddisastersupplies.com/

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Specialized Bandages

MTR Blood Stopper Bandage - These cost about $2 each and are good pressure bandages to stop bleeding from a moderately large wound, i.e. one that really needs suturing.  [Here are drawings of how to use a similar bandage from Swift.]  [Moore Medical carries Emergency Pressure Dressings at $2.69 each.]

The Emergency Bandage is a new first-aid device for stanching of blood flow from traumatic hemorrhagic wounds in pre-hospital emergency situations.  It can be used for amputation wounds..  About $5/each for the "civilian 4" version.  I think every CERT should have at least ten of these for wounds that need immediate attention and need a way of keeping strong pressure on the wound while transporting to the hospital.  See this great Training Video.  [http://www.emergencybandagec2.net/ offers 4" @ $4.65 and 6" @ $4.95, but their shipping is expensive.]

QuikClot 1st Response™Advanced Clotting Sponge - You pack this into a wound that is bleeding so severely that pressure isn't enough to stop the bleeding. [Moore Medical carries them at $39.99 for a pack of 5 sponges.]
 

Easy Community Stocking of Supplies

Here's an inspiration spiel you're welcome to borrow for your community newsletters:

What would you need to treat a moderate gash--one that's not immediately life threatening but which could become severely infected if not properly treated?  Even if your home is bolted to the foundation, a broken window or a shattered vase could easily cause a 3-inch gash in your arm.  Or you could receive a small injury if you're outdoors and are thrown against a fence, a telephone pole or even the curb.

We will have some simple bandages available to CERT after an earthquake, but there are some supplies that are difficult to keep current because of short shelf lives.  You can do a lot to provide for your own family's needs very inexpensively as follows:

Make sure you always have a couple of bottles of hydrogen peroxide in your home; hydrogen peroxide  is good for cleaning shallow wounds.  And it's cheap, around $2 at the drugstore.

If you are a contact lens wearer who uses non-preserved sterile saline solution, you are in a position to provide a tremendous service to our community with just a little trouble and a very little expense to yourself.  Those little 3-oz. bottles of sterile saline solution are perfect for cleaning out wounds.  Figure out how many you typically use within the standard expiration time period for your product, and always have that many on hand.  So you'll end up having to store some  extra product and will have some minor mental overhead of having to rotate your stock.  But you'll never waste any and thus will never have to pay any real money for it.

Then, when The Big One hits and you have family and friends who have minor injuries that need cleaning, you can be The Hero by pulling out your stock of sterile saline solution.  Really, this is about as easy as preparedness gets, but not everyone is in a position to do this.
 

Medical Information

Quick Medical Tips

How to Clean a Wound During First Aid - this includes information about using a syringe to create a jet of cleaning or disinfecting fluid  [Here's a more printable version.]

The purpose of treating wounds is to stop the bleeding (pressure), prevent infection (clean wound, apply antibiotic and cover with bandage) and facilitate healing (by closing wounds with butterfly bandages or suturing if necessary).

Cleaning a wound with a syringe to create pressure

Closure of Simple Lacerations - simple guide with pictures teaches you how to use benzoin to anchor the ends of a butterfly bandage or steri-strip.

Duct Tape Rx - How to Use Duct Tape to Close a Wound (this used to be called Achieving Closure in the Backcountry: The Duct Tape Rx for a Sticky Situation) This is a fabulous way to achieve the same closure as suturing for shallow gashes without medical equipment and without piercing the skin.

Duct Tape Bandage

Ductanium Bandage - a YouTube video

Duct tape to close wounds - a YouTube video with some refinements: using a toothpick to provide more structure at the edge, and it has an interesting way of lacing the twine so you can more easily tighten it.

The ZipStitch is a new specialized medical device that does the same thing but is easier to use and might achieve a better result. ZIPSTITCH MAKES IT A CINCH TO CLOSE WOUNDS IN THE FIELD - This is a fancy and super cool (and pricey - $20-$30 each) version of the Duct Tape Bandage.

Where There Is No Doctor: a village health care handbook by David Werner with Carol Thurman and Jane Maxwell
Chapter 10 focuses on First Aid.  I highly recommend printing out pages 77 (Shock), 82 (How to Control Bleeding from a Wound, including pressure points to reduce flow through main arteries), 84-87 (How to Clean and Bandage Small or Large Wounds).

How to Improvise Butterfly Stitches or Steristrips - this is a quick and simple way to turn regularl medical tape (or ANY tape in a pinch) into a butterfly bandage. It's quick and simple!

Wound Care and Improvised Saline Solutions

Water Disinfection for Storage w/Clorox:
from http://forums.cosmoaccess.net/forum/survival/prep/water.htm
"Water stored in thoroughly cleaned plastic or glass containers can be chemically disinfected for long-term storage by treating each gallon with sixteen drops of liquid chlorine bleach (Clorox or Purex type bleaches, containing 4% to 6% sodium hypochlorite). One teaspoon of bleach disinfects five gallons of water. This level of treatment will prevent growth of microorganisms during storage. After adding the proper dosage and stirring, allow the water to stand for 30 minutes. It should then have a distinct odor of chlorine.

Basics of Birth for those who don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies! (sometimes called Emergency Childbirth)

Post-Trauma Recovery Protocol by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Communications Information

CERT Effective Radio Communications - handy guidelines
 

OMVNA-CERT Information

Help Your Community in an Emergency - main page for MV CERT

Mountain View's Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training program

CERT Introduction Training: IS-317 (Online)

Mountain View, CA Cert Events

OBSOLETE Trailer Supply List - This is a list of the medical supplies stored in the OMVNA-CERT trailer at Landel's School.

We have 3 PracticalTrauma Trauma Kit bags.  (They've revised the contents.)

Lynn Brown's Supply List - This is a list provided by Lynn Brown; I don't remember whether it's a list of recommended supplies or supplies that they have on hand?

If you are interested in being trained on how you can prepare for and respond during an emergency the Mountain View Fire Department offers Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training.  CERT training is a program designed to prepare Mountain View residents to help themselves, their families and neighbors, in the event of a disaster. The training covers basic skills that are important to know in a disaster when emergency services are not available. Formerly known as Neighborhood Disaster Preparedness Training, the CERT program is free to all citizens of Mountain View .  For more information please visit the City's website at http://www.mountainview.gov/city_hall/fire/programs_n_services/cert.asp.

Thank you for helping the Fire Department to be sure that Mountain View and its residents are prepared!
 

About Our Faults

p. 39 of an Environmental Impact Report gives some great information about the faults that might affect downtown Mountain View:

Fault Rupture. Fault rupture is the displacement of the earth’s surface resulting from fault movement associated with an earthquake. The site is located approximately 7.2 miles northeast of the Alquist- Priolo Earthquake Fault Hazard Zone (A-PEFZ) for the San Andreas Fault, and approximately 11 miles southwest of the A-PEFZ for the Hayward Fault. The northern terminus of the complex and potentially active Berrocal/Monte Vista-Shannon fault zone is about 4.5 miles to the southwest, while the inactive Cascade, Stanford, and San Jose faults all cross the City of Mountain View from the southeast to the northwest, within approximately 1 to 3 miles of the project site. The California Geological Survey has not mapped any of these inactive faults as an A-PEFZ, indicating that these faults are not likely to generate surface rupture. The project site is not located within a designated APEFZ and no known surface expressions cross the project site. The proposed project would not impact persons or structures due to rupture of a known earthquake fault.

Strong Seismic Ground Shaking. The entire San Francisco Bay Area is located in a region of active seismicity. Historically, numerous moderate to strong earthquakes have been generated in northern California by several major faults and fault zones in the San Andreas Fault Zone system. The level of active seismicity results in a classification of the San Francisco Bay Area as seismic hazard Zone 4 (the highest risk category) in the California Building Code (CBC).

Ground shaking from earthquakes along the known active faults in the region could cause damage to people and property. The Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) earthquake hazard mapping indicates a Magnitude 7.9 event on the San Andreas Fault would result in very strong to violent (MMI17-VIII/IX) shaking in the vicinity of the project site.18 Ground shaking potential is estimated on a worst-case basis by taking the maximum expected earthquake and designing for the peak accelerations that it could generate. The expected peak horizontal acceleration (with a 10 percent chance of being exceeded in the next 50 years) generated by any of the seismic sources potentially affecting the Mountain View area is estimated by the California Geological Survey at about 0.482g19 on the alluvium near the Bay.20 This level of ground shaking is considered a potential hazard.

17 Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale; the most commonly used scale for measurement of the subjective effects of earthquake intensity.

18 Association of Bay Area Governments, 2004. Earthquake Shaking Scenario, Entire San Andreas Fault: Magnitude 7.9 event. Website: www.abag.ca.gov.

City releases data on homes at risk in an earthquake by Kevin Forestieri / Mountain View Voice [8/31/18] - Council to consider retrofitting rules affecting hundreds of soft-story buildings in Mountain View