Writes Philli in California: 

Community Emergency Respoonce Team (CERT) is a federally sponsored program, by Citizen Corps, to increase emergency preparedness in any and all US communities. It's a fabulous and little-known organizing tool. Any community can start up a CERT program. A good way to maximize the effectiveness of the program is for the city or community to hire a coordinator or director to implement the CERT program. Individual CERTS can expand to include all kinds of preparedness measures.

See: CERT national website

From the Ashland Daily Tidings via Energy Bulletin:

The CERT team, the City of Ashland’s Community Emergency Response Team, typically concentrates on being prepared for an emergency situation such as a flood or a fire.

But at a meeting open to the public on Wednesday night at 7 p.m. in the council chambers at 1175 East Main Street, the volunteer emergency response organization will look into what it should be doing to prepare for an emergency situation of a different kind.

With the help of Ashland’s energy conservation guru Dick Wanderscheid, the group plans to discuss to what extent it may want to prepare for Peak Oil, or a similar-style event that could leave not only Ashland but perhaps the entire region or country without power or worse.

In Australia, the concept of CERTs seem to have been adopted by the Ambulance service, with a first aid emphasis, with the Victorian state government funding five such projects in rural Vic.

However there may be scope for broadening the concept here also.   There are probably some legal obligations of government to properly prepare for potential emergencies such as food shortages for instance, a legislative angle someone might want to pursue?