City police and more than 20 emergency agencies juggled the threat of explosions and challenges of real-time decision making Thursday in one of the largest disaster drills ever mounted in Cumberland County.
The four-hour drill called out, in addition to Millville police, fire and rescue units, their municipal and state counterparts from as close as Vineland and as far as Atlantic City and Trenton. Atlantic City and state police sent bomb disposal units, complete with robots.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security gave the county Office of Emergency Management $42,000 to mount the anti-terrorism exercise, which will keep participants comparing notes and writing reports for months.
“I think it is a fantastic exercise,” county Office of Emergency Management Coordinator Joe Sever said.
While there were some blips in the drill — held behind Lakeside Middle School — consultants who wrote the drill script and oversaw a post-drill critiquing were happy with the result. County, city and other agency officials generally were positive, too.
Millville police Capt. Wayne Smith said the drill started off right with the opening actions from the first two patrolmen on scene, Steve Jones and Manny Morales.
They were greeted by “wounded,” panicked men and women fleeing a bus where a passenger had set off a bomb.
Smith said the officers grasped the magnitude of the event and reported it accurately, allowing a chain of contacts to start among local, county and state “first responders.”
The basis of the script was a Lion Trailways bus had stopped at Wheaton Plaza on North High Street, where a passenger was found to have an explosive device.
The North Sharp Street school stood in as the shopping center for logistical reasons.
Among the goals was to see how well the agencies taking part, in addition to their regular training, understood and used the national emergency response guidelines, known as the Incident Command System.
There were surprises, like two extra explosions besides the original blast.
The script also unexpectedly gave site command to the regular police shift commander, Lt. Edward Zadroga.
Smith said Zadroga actually showed up well before the call to him was to be made. “He really stepped up,” he said.
Twenty-five agencies, including nonprofits like the American Red Cross, eventually were on scene. That set up, as planned, opportunities for confusion.
Smith said an immediate lesson is “the value of immediate communication and coordinating” with the fire department, emergency medical services and other law enforcement agencies.
“This (recognition) was a product of recent Incident Command System training and hazmat training by officers and supervisors of the Millville Police Department,” Smith said.
The county hired O’Brien’s Response Management of Spring, Texas, to prepare the drill scenario.
Tim O’Leary, vice president of O’Brien’s Response Management, said the drill did indicate some weak spots in use of the command guidelines. The firm sometimes does follow up consulting.
Freeholder William Whelan, who oversees the Public Safety committee, and Freeholder Nelson Thompson attended the exercise.
“They’ll find there was some things they did very well and some things they have to work on,” Whelan said.
Whelan said it is up to participating agencies to determine whether more outside advice is needed or whether in-house training is enough.
About 144 volunteers played the role of victims, reveling at the opportunity.
Mike Robbins, 16, of Upper Deerfield Township, is a volunteer firefighter. His mother works for the county 9-1-1 system.
“I told her I’d volunteer my time to do this,” Robbins said.
However, he said, the drill is useful for his work at Seabrook Fire and Rescue.
Ztasha Kirkland, 23, of Vineland, played a pregnant woman.
“This is so cool,” Kirkland said. “They should put me on a list of people who have nothing else to do.”
