A tanker truck collided with a school bus filled with children in Fairfield early Friday morning. Soon the tanker started leaking, spilling hazardous materials and endangering an entire neighborhood. And what are Fairfield Police Sgt. Greg Gunter and Assistant Fire Chief Scott Bisson doing when this is going on? Playing with toy cars, of course.
Not to worrythe accident was just the final phase of a three-day training summit hosted by the Fairfield Police this week. The cops gathered top crews from the Fairfield Fire Department, the Board of Education and Town Hall, along with other officers from Westport and the Connecticut State Police. The training sessions focused on how all those groups could work together in a major emergency.
When an incident goes beyond any one departments resources, were going to need help, Police Chief Gary MacNamera said of his reasons for hosting the training. Rather than have the first time they apply [the training] be during a real emergency, were going to have them apply it now on a model city.
The culmination of the program was Fridays test run. Crews from BowMac Educational Services simulated an actual emergency, and gradually escalated the problems the crews had to solve. Emergency responders broke into two groups. Asst. Chief Bisson and Sgt. Gunter acted as the ground team, calling in dispatchers to move resources around a model city, complete with mock-ups of buildings, streets and vehicles.
Meanwhile, other town officials gathered around the corner in a Command Center. Deputy Police Chief Chris Lyddy, Assistant Fire Chief Doug Chavanello and Fairfield Public Schools Security Director Sal Morabito spat out orders and made decisions as if really witnessing the crisis unfold.
Vincent Faggiano, who led the training for BowMac, said hes travelled all over the country giving this exact seminar. But what made Fairfield different than most of his clients was the fact that the town decided to h0old the seminar before a major disaster occurred, not as a reaction to one.
In a time, there were folk that would say, This could never happen here, Faggiano said. That type of mentality usually led to disaster, because when it did happen, there was total unpreparedness. What were seeing in the forward-thinking communities, theyre saying, This could happen here, we need to be ready for it.
Do you think Fairfield is ready for a large-scale emergency? Share your own concerns in the comments below.
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