Drill Tests Preparedness Of Emergency Agencies
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By Tim [email protected]
The Kosciusko County 911 dispatch center received several calls like this from cell phone users at the City County Athletic Complex around 3 p.m. Wednesday.
One of the callers, Kathy Lemons, finished her call, hung up, and said, "OK, they said units are on their way. Now go lie down in the grass."
A handful of people sprawled out on a soccer field and waited for area police, firefighters and paramedics to arrive.
No, this wasn't part of an elaborate prank, it was the beginning of an emergency exercise scenario.
The drill included more than 15 area emergency agencies. Lemons, an employee of Kosciusko Community Hospital, and the other "victims" volunteered to take part in the exercise designed to test the county's ability to deal with a wide-scale disaster.
"The whole focus of it was to test our disaster preparedness," said County Emergency Management Director Ed Rock.
Rock said the drill included the use of a new resource for emergency response. "One of the purposes I had from an emergency management standpoint was to start acclimating people to the emergency operations center, which we never had before," said Rock.
Rock said the purpose of the center is to bring representatives from each responding agency together during a large-scale disaster to coordinate and plan responses.
Tim Trimmer, a emergency medical responder with Multi-Township EMS, said the drill was a good hands-on practice for on-the-scene responders in the county.
"It's very valuable because you never know when you're going to have a disaster," Trimmer said. "When we have these drills, we can get more in tune with what we're doing."
Wednesday's drill scenario was planned to include a tornado, lightning strike, leaking anhydrous ammonia tank, damage to several residential and medical buildings requiring evacuation and decontamination of victims and rescuers. Rock said the drill was designed to stretch the county's emergency response resources to the point where cooperation and logistics planning would become vital.
The drill was not carried out to completion Wednesday. Around 4 p.m., emergency personnel turned their attention toward a real incident at Hoffman Lake, where a man shot at a sheriff's deputy.
Rock said, though the drill wasn't finished, it was still beneficial to the county's emergency response teams. "For the most part, it all did work as well as I expected it to work, as far as the situation we were in," Rock said.
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The Kosciusko County 911 dispatch center received several calls like this from cell phone users at the City County Athletic Complex around 3 p.m. Wednesday.
One of the callers, Kathy Lemons, finished her call, hung up, and said, "OK, they said units are on their way. Now go lie down in the grass."
A handful of people sprawled out on a soccer field and waited for area police, firefighters and paramedics to arrive.
No, this wasn't part of an elaborate prank, it was the beginning of an emergency exercise scenario.
The drill included more than 15 area emergency agencies. Lemons, an employee of Kosciusko Community Hospital, and the other "victims" volunteered to take part in the exercise designed to test the county's ability to deal with a wide-scale disaster.
"The whole focus of it was to test our disaster preparedness," said County Emergency Management Director Ed Rock.
Rock said the drill included the use of a new resource for emergency response. "One of the purposes I had from an emergency management standpoint was to start acclimating people to the emergency operations center, which we never had before," said Rock.
Rock said the purpose of the center is to bring representatives from each responding agency together during a large-scale disaster to coordinate and plan responses.
Tim Trimmer, a emergency medical responder with Multi-Township EMS, said the drill was a good hands-on practice for on-the-scene responders in the county.
"It's very valuable because you never know when you're going to have a disaster," Trimmer said. "When we have these drills, we can get more in tune with what we're doing."
Wednesday's drill scenario was planned to include a tornado, lightning strike, leaking anhydrous ammonia tank, damage to several residential and medical buildings requiring evacuation and decontamination of victims and rescuers. Rock said the drill was designed to stretch the county's emergency response resources to the point where cooperation and logistics planning would become vital.
The drill was not carried out to completion Wednesday. Around 4 p.m., emergency personnel turned their attention toward a real incident at Hoffman Lake, where a man shot at a sheriff's deputy.
Rock said, though the drill wasn't finished, it was still beneficial to the county's emergency response teams. "For the most part, it all did work as well as I expected it to work, as far as the situation we were in," Rock said.
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