Disaster First Aid began in 1996 with a group of friends, coworkers and colleagues in Emergency Medical Service, Fire Service, & Public Safety who realized we all had the same thought troubling our professional and personal consciousness for years.

There have been hundreds of thousands of people who died in major emergencies like earthquakes, fires, tornados, explosions, and other disasters, who didn't really need to die. A great many of them could have been saved by simple actions, if someone in the crowd just knew what to do, and could do it quickly -instead of having to wait for hours or days till professional rescuers could reach them.
 

The tragic reality is, in a disaster when there are dozens, hundreds, or possibly thousands of people injured at the same time, there cannot possibly be enough ambulances for all of them. Most will have to wait until help can be brought in from other cities and states, and the wait is predicted to be from 24 hours to 3 days and longer.

Our obvious first task was to find a way to teach people in neighborhoods, offices, workplaces, high schools, colleges, construction sites, Community Centers - anywhere and everywhere - how to do these simple but critical lifesaving things.

DFA teaches how to save the lives that can be saved in those critical first minutes and hours after a disaster strikes. This unique copyrighted course teaches only the most essential skills and knowledge, with no frills, no unnecessary details, and no fancy medical words. Just what you need to know, in the clearest simplest form. It's low-stress, lots of hands-on, and actually fun to learn.

At first we taught the course locally, but that wasn't reaching enough people. So we started the DFA website and created the user-friendly "Instructor Kit" to make it easy for CERT Programs, Schools, and even community groups to teach the course.

Starting as a kitchen table small-business in Berkeley, Disaster First Aid has grown into a complete teaching and learning System used in 35 US cities, several Canadian provinces, Haiti, New Delhi India, and Jakarta Indonesia, by schools, corporations, nonprofit organizations, CERT Proggrams, and small-business independent instructors & training centers.

Some CERT programs, schools, and businesses that teach DFA

Why isn't "Standard" First Aid good enough?

Copyright 1996-2010 V. Chames / Darkhorse Press United States