I had done emergency massage in Florida during Hurricane Andrew and also in Oklahoma City, so I was approached by the AMTA to be state coordinator. We started the program and had twenty eight team members. 

Unfortunately I had to leave my position after seven months to relocate to Asheville, NC. The woman who took over my position, Sue Welfley, found it impossible to work with the AMTA and the state disbanded the team. 

She and Mark Wilson went on to form the Florida Immediate Response Stress Team (FIRST). While promoting FIRST at the annual hurricane conference in Florida, they were approached by Warren Moore of the NC Dept. of Emergency Management. He asked what they were doing and if this could happened in NC. Mark & Sue told him that I was now living in NC and he should contact me about setting up a team.

Warren contacted me and with his help we formed our team here in North Carolina. NC is the first state to have a emergency response massage team directly connected with it's Department of Emergency Management. 

We are a member of the North Carolina Critical Incident Stress Management Advisory Council (NCCISMAC). There are fourteen teams, with CERMT being the only massage team. The NCCISMAC does de-briefings, de-fusings, interventions and one on one peer counseling. 

We give a fifteen minute chair-massage prior to a person meeting with CISM, it has the effect of allowing the person to open up more and to talk things out. We have been a team since 1998.

Are you a national organization and if so, what states have a team or teams?
We are in the process of forming an international team. Florida and Alaska also have teams. 

During our last deployment to New York, we had therapists from different states and the United Kingdom come together to work and see what we could do about a international organization. We are working to set up independent teams in each state, so each team we deploy to NY has therapists from around the country with them. This way they can go back to their states and start setting up teams.

What does it take to become a team? 
Our qualifications for members are that they have a license (if the state they live in is licensed), proof of attending an acredited school and insurance. As far as state teams go, they probably should have ten or more members. We do a training course, that may vary from state to state, on CISM, EM, Aromatherapy and a chair massage routine. Members need to take the training.

What types of emergencies do you respond to?
Hurricanes, fires, floods, bombings, plane crashes, shootings, anywhere we are called in to help.

Have you responded to any international emergencies, if so, which ones, and if not, why not.
We haven't responded to anything international yet. We don't just go into disaster situations unless we are asked by the commanding office to come. 

Also we are a non-profit organization and we raise all our own funding. It becomes cost prohibitive to travel abroad to respond, that's why we are forming international teams.

How is the WTC disaster different from Loma Prieta or the bombing in Oklahoma?
I wasn't at Loma Prieta so wouldn't know first hand. I do now that this was the first time any organized massage effort went on. Oklahoma City was at that time ,the largest terrorist attack the States had ever witnessed. 

We set up massage in the civic center just five blocks from the bomb site. Two hundred therapists worked twenty four hours, seven days a week, for about three weeks. WTC is on such a huge magnitude, thousands of therapists from across the country volunteered their services.

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