October 31, 2013 - 3:23 PM
The Regional District’s Emergency Program is once again being exercised.
However, unlike the full-scale ‘Operation Unity’ field exercise at Kelowna International Airport last fall, this practice session on Friday morning November 1st, is dubbed ‘Operation Educate’. It’s a table-top session involving senior leadership staff from local governments, emergency response agencies and community partners.
Regional Emergency Program Coordinator Jason Brolund says, “Operation Educate follows up on lessons that we learned from our last exercise. It sees representatives from many different organizations coming together to discuss their response to a non-fire related incident. The exercise scenario focuses on an active threat that’s being posed in a public building, where one or more suspects threaten or harm other innocent people. Extensive planning is required in case an event like this occurs, so that appropriate resources from many different agencies respond rapidly in order to save lives and conduct safe operations. Operation Educate provides us with this critical practice opportunity to coordinate and pre-plan how our teams can effectively deal with a real-life incident.”
Brolund adds, “Besides the Regional Emergency Program and emergency responders from the RCMP, BC Ambulance and local fire departments, representatives from Central Okanagan School District, the University of BC Okanagan campus, Interior Health, Kelowna International Airport and other agencies have been involved for several months to design this table-top exercise.”
News from © iNFOnews, 2013