I disagree - I have been involved in civilian emergency prep communities for a while now, and it is the formal, published stance of FEMA that having civilians who understand incident response logistics and advanced first aid is absolutely critical to managing the first hours of an incident. We teach advanced trauma first aid (wound packing, field dressing, tourniquets, chest wounds, triage etc), as well as field command hierarchy and management to be handled until professional help arrives.
Teaching civilians how to stabilize, log and report on incidents has a huge multiplier effect on the effectiveness of emergency services. The idea that people should not get involved because they are not professionals is very outdated. It takes about two weeks to go over the basics of incident management, S&R, and first aid/triage. Once you’ve done that and established a local CERT volunteer corps, FEMA will literally give you grants to hand out equipment, hold practice exercises and recruit more volunteers.