DuPage officials hone their skills during disaster drill

On Friday morning outside the headquarters of DuPage County's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management it was partly sunny and a comfortable 63 degrees.

Inside the building's emergency operations center, more than two dozen county workers were dealing with the aftermath of a heat wave, flash floods and a tornado outbreak.

Of course, none of the catastrophic weather events were real.

It all was part of statewide emergency drill designed to hone the disaster-handling skills of various public and private organizations. The exercise involved county, state and federal agencies - including Lake County's Emergency Management Agency - in 15 locations around Illinois.

"As a county, we have to make sure we're working together with our municipalities and our partnerships when there's a disaster or an emergency," said William Babyar, the director of DuPage's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. "We practice, we train and make plans."

As part of the DuPage scenario, a severe storm rolled through the county following several days of excessive heat. First, there was flash flooding. Then a tornado ripped through the central region of the county.

There were reports of fires, downed power lines, broken telephone poles and tornado-related damage from southwest Naperville to Elmhurst.

If it all sounds far-fetched, officials reminded everyone before Friday's drill that DuPage already had something similar happen in July 2012.

That's when a powerful storm left more than half the county without power. For five days, county officials and ComEd representatives worked together at the emergency operations center to respond to the outage and ensure that hospitals and other critical care facilities were made a priority in getting power restored.

"This could really happen," said David Adler, a coordinator with DuPage's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. "This is what we have to be prepared for."

During the exercise, a 24-hour period was condensed to two and a half hours. During the first part of the session, drill participants responded to the storm's initial impact. They then dealt with the aftermath.

Adler said drills like Friday's are vital to ensuring things go smoothly when a real disaster strikes.

"If you plan, train and exercise, that's how you can be the most prepared for success when the real thing happens," he said.

During the drill, participants worked to solve problems like finding a place to put displaced animals and how to feed hundreds of people at a shelter.

A list of tasks was displayed on a large monitor. Tasks were marked as they were completed.

Not everyone stayed in the emergency operations center.

Teams were sent to locations in Lombard, Glen Ellyn and Elmhurst to assess damage and help residents. At one of the sites, volunteers played the roles of displaced homeowners.

Meanwhile, police and other emergency officials were on hand to observe the drill and evaluate how it went.

"Plans are nothing but words on paper unless they can be operational," Babyar said. "We don't like to have plans unless we know they work. So we do our planning, we train, we see what worked and we improve our plans."