Orange County puts emergency response to the test in large-scale disaster drill
Simulated hurricane puts state and county agencies through surprise scenarios at Orange County's emergency services center.
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Orange County put its emergency response operation to the test Wednesday during a large-scale training exercise in Goshen that challenged officials with a series of simulated emergencies unfolding in real time.
Representatives from multiple state and county agencies were stationed throughout the Orange County Emergency Services Center, receiving updates about how the fictional disaster was affecting their operations and responding as new problems emerged.
Wednesday’s scenario centered around a hurricane bringing prolonged heavy rain and damaging winds to Orange County. The simulated storm resulted in widespread flooding, downed trees and power lines, road and bridge closures, utility outages and communities cut off by flooded or blocked roads. Officials were also confronted with simulated building collapses, evacuations and the need to establish temporary shelters.
Orange County Executive Steve Neuhaus said the scenarios are intentionally kept from participants ahead of time so officials have to react and make decisions as they would during an actual emergency.
“This one is a hurricane. We’ve had terrorist attacks, we’ve had mass casualty shootings, we’ve had train derailments, plane crashes — so we constantly train,” Neuhaus said. “Everyone, including myself, doesn’t know what scenario we’re walking into.”
The annual exercise required agencies to communicate with one another, coordinate their response and determine which problems needed to be addressed first as conditions changed.
“It’s how we react and how those situations are addressed — and how do you prioritize?” Neuhaus said. “What’s the most important thing to cover because you have a laundry list of things to do and only a short amount of time and resources?”
Neuhaus said the exercise included representatives from a wide range of agencies and organizations, including law enforcement, emergency management and the military.
“We have every sister and brother agency here that you can imagine,” Neuhaus said.
The county conducts the large-scale exercise annually, along with several smaller training exercises throughout the year. Neuhaus said the training is especially important as longtime employees retire and newer members of the county’s emergency response team take their place.
“People retire. We have a lot of new people here that’s never been here before,” Neuhaus said. “Some of our emergency management team are new. Some of our county team is brand new.”
The scenarios are fictional, but many are modeled after emergencies Orange County and the surrounding region have experienced.
“We’ve been through Hurricane Sandy. We’ve been through the floods, the fires, the forest fires,” Neuhaus said. “These are real-world events that unfortunately have happened and will unfortunately likely happen again, and we need to be prepared for them,” he added.
Wednesday’s exercise also tested Orange County’s new countywide emergency alert system. Residents with compatible cell phones in the targeted area may have received test emergency notifications as part of the training. The county says residents do not need to register for the system to receive those alerts.
