For the first time in its history, all Hamilton County emergency personnel participated in Mass Casualty Incident Training Oct. 1 through 3. Designed to test and train first responders, the training simulated a tornado touchdown in Hamilton County.
“We’re working with people we don’t normally work with. Having a situation where we’re together for that purpose is crucial,” Westfield Police Chief Joel Rush said. “It puts faces with names. All the agencies come together, we don’t have that opportunity too often … This training will help aid that. It’s all about preparing.”
“Emergency responders train a lot with their teams. It’s training with other communities they don’t get to do in a safe, controlled environment,” Noblesville Deputy Mayor Mike Hendricks said.
Participants included 360 members from fire and medic services, law enforcement personnel, 911 Communications, Emergency Management, public and private health sectors and local government.
“We’re trying to prepare for a catastrophic event such as the Henryville tornados,” Hamilton County Commissioner Mark Heirbrandt said. “We need to help public safety be better prepared because if we don’t it sets you up for failure.”
Hamilton County Emergency Management Director Tom Sivak said each day had a different focus. During the simulation, emergency personnel from different stations worked together to execute practical drills including water rescues, entrapments and hazardous materials fires.
“We find capabilities gaps and put improvement plans in place,” Sivak said. “It’s a cycle – train, exercise, repeat – and identify when you have pitfalls.”
“It’s real-life scenarios that happened somewhere, thankfully not in Hamilton County. We want to be better prepared for it now – to plan and prepare ahead of time,” Hamilton County Sheriff Mark Bowen said.
Bowen said the plan is to conduct all-encompassing incident training annually or every other year at the new Central Indiana Public Safety Training and Education Center off River Road in Noblesville.
“It’s not a regular portion of training, but we are trying to incorporate more,” he said. “We want to find different types of scenarios. We have plans to expand it in the future.”
The training facility has been in the works for 20 years according to Bowen, but it took the proper location and amenities to become a reality. The facility is technically operated on Westfield land it purchased three years ago from Noblesville to install four water wells. The 90-acres include a variety of environments including woods, cliffs, a lake, White River and flatlands that are accessible for all agencies in the county.
“We don’t need five training facilities in Hamilton County so we put all of our resources together,” Westfield Mayor Andy Cook said. “It’s a more efficient job of training public safety.”