The Scout motto, “be prepared,” is more than a just a phrase – it’s a lifesaver. It means when disaster strikes, a Scout should be ready to take action in the blink of an eye.

Impassioned by those two words, hundreds of Scouts from the Greater St. Louis Area Council spent the weekend at the Beaumont Scout Reservation preparing for the unexpected.

Thanks to the Mid America Teen Community Emergency Response Team (TEEN CERT), around 500 Scouts and adult leaders learned how to assist their families and emergency responders in the event of an emergency or natural disaster.

Participants were trained on fire safety, medical disaster operations, first aid, search and rescue, team organization, and how to assist people with special and functional needs in a disaster situation during the weekend training program.

“We hope in real life these Scouts never have to use these skills we teach them, but it’s a life skill that many of them are going to need to know,” Mark Rosenblum, a spokesperson for TEEN CERT, said to KSDK. “There are first aid situations all the time, there are fires that happen, so we want to make sure they know how to do normal everyday skills that everybody should know.”

To say the event was a success would be an understatement. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), this was the largest exercise of its kind ever done.

“It makes you prepared for whatever could happen. So if something happens at the school, I can step up if I need to if they need my help,” 15-year-old Scout Sam D said.

Check out the video below to catch footage of the disaster drills and head to KSDK.com for the full story.