Disaster First Aid is the first professionally written, experience-based First Aid course for large scale emergencies that teaches Public Safety standard practices and protocols adapted for citizen level. DFA is multi-level learning, with visual. verbal, live demonstration, and hands-on practice. Not only the mind, but the body also learns. What the body knows, the mind will recollect, even under stress.

Disaster First Aid was written by an experienced Adult Education Teacher and Emergency Medical caregiver who is also a former Firefighter, Fire Training Officer, Emergency Medical Services Officer, and a currently practicing Hospital E.R. Emergency Medical Technician with more than 25 years of hospital and field experience.

This is NOT "Standard First Aid." Most other courses that call themselves "disaster" first aid are actually just the same-old Standard first aid with a disaster "spin" added on.

Those courses will not be much help in a large-scale disaster, because they don't include Rapid Triage, and they are all built upon the assumption that ambulance or Emergency Room services will be available quickly. For the great majority of us, that will be impossible in a disaster.

Disaster First Aid covers the injuries and conditions expected to occur in large numbers in a severe medical emergency such as major earthquake, terrorist attack, massive explosion, or structure collapse. This DFA course focuses on the critical first- actions that are necessary to save lives and prevent the worsening of injury in the first minutes and hours, the time when the most lives are either saved or lost.

The information and actions in this course follow the standard practices and protocols of California Public Safety agencies such as Police, Fire, and Paramedic, scaled down to the citizen's level of ability and resources.

Disaster First Aid teaches you *S.T.A.R.T. Rapid Triage and the most essential life-saving and limb-saving skills. They can be done by the average person, but they must be done soon, within the first minutes of “the Golden Hour.”

In DFA everything is presented in a clear logical way, in plain-language, with plenty of hands-on practice in a no-stress group environment.

Disaster First Aid is designed to be practical useful, and accessible to as many people as possible. You absolutely can do a great service with just this essential knowledge, with whatever materials you find nearby, and with your own good common sense.

see also: Anyone Can Save Lives

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

Disaster First Aid ©1996-2010 V. Chames / Darkhorse Press United States