Major mock disaster planned

by Kris Svela

WELLINGTON CTY.

County residents should not necessarily be alarmed if they see emergency vehicles on local roads next week.

Emergency Management Ontario (EMO), together with emergency services in Wellington, Grey, Bruce and Huron counties, is staging a mock emergency from Oct. 15 to 18.

Trillium Resolve is a multi-jurisdictional disaster response exercise developed by EMO and Bruce Power. It will simulate severe weather events impacting large segments of southwestern Ontario, an EMO news release states.

Emergency simulations will take place from Oct. 16 to Oct. 18 in the four counties. The exercise will test the province’s ability to respond to large-scale emergencies in collaboration with its partners from the federal government, local municipalities, NGOs and the private sector.

Linda Dickson, Wellington County’s community emergency management coordinator, said the exercise will be larger than the “perfect storm” mock disaster hosted two years ago.

“This one is bigger because of all the players (emergency services) involved,” she said. “Hopefully we’ll get a lot more information between the groups.”

Trillium Resolve will draw on the expertise of approximately 1,000 participants from over 50 organizations who will test their response plans and skills with scenarios designed to be as realistic as possible, or through discussion-based tabletop exercises.

“In municipalities where full-scale scenarios are planned, local residents can expect to see emergency vehicles and personnel responding to simulated emergencies at various locales, including buildings, roads and other key sites,” EMO stated.

The Provincial Emergency Operations Centre in Toronto will be fully activated to coordinate the province’s response to the simulated disaster.

Trillium Resolve is the fourth in an emergency exercise series known as Huron Challenge, launched in February 2012. Since then, a number of training and planning sessions, seminars and table-top exercises have taken place.  Participating organizations have collaborated to prepare for this event and to ensure the exercise tests a wide range of different response plans and procedures as well as the coordination of all the partners’ response.

As with all emergency exercises, officials say Trillium Resolve will be a valuable opportunity to test emergency plans and procedures and to confirm which areas are robust and which need improving.

They say the lessons learned from this exercise will be used to improve emergency plans, update training and, ultimately, ensure Ontario is better prepared for a real large-scale emergency.

October 12, 2012