Vermont emergency management officials are preparing for one of the largest disaster drills in state history. The exercise will involve more than 4,000 people at the local, state, and national level.
State officials will announce on Wednesday that the drill, called "Vigilant Guard," will take place between July 25 and August 2 in several parts of the state.
But they have no idea about the details of the event, or how their response systems will be tested.
Chris Herrick is the director of the Vermont Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security. He's being kept in the dark about the details of the mock disaster, but he does know it will involve thousands of local and state officials and many members of the Vermont National Guard.
He also knows that the hypothetical situation will be so severe that the state will need to seek immediate help from several federal agencies.
“It's been in planning for a number of years,” Herrick says. “We are going to test our ability to request assistance through FEMA for regular military assets in the event of a major catastrophe."
Herrick is expecting that emergency management personnel will be confronted by a series of catastrophic scenarios.
“Each of which on their own would be significant, but they are all going to happen at the same time, so that we're going to be driven to the limits of our planning and our ability to respond,” he says.
Herrick says the goal of the mock disaster drill is to evaluate how teams react to the catastrophe and to learn from the experience.
"Just finding what we are good at doesn't help us prepare for the next disaster,” he says. “And so I'm pretty sure the folks planning this have found ways to really stretch it. We will have an improvement plan after this."
And Herrick says there are a lot of similarities in responding to either a terrorist attack or a natural disaster.
“If we're prepared well for every kind of an event, then … the response guidelines that we've developed through these practices, if you will, still apply – and apply very well,” Herrick says.
The State of Vermont recently was awarded just over $7 million in emergency response funds. Herrick says the mock drill will help state officials decide how to target this new money.
