Emergency Management Team Tests for State Disaster Response
ANTIOCH – While the world, especially Chicagoans, focused on the NATO Summit in mid-May, twenty-eight Illinois Emergency Management Assistance Team (EMAT) members from across Illinois, were in Antioch May 16-22, 2012, for a six-day training and exercise event. The team, though training and exercising, was also staged as a State of Illinois deployable asset should they have been needed in the Chicago area as a result of NATO activities.
The team utilized a vacant Antioch business and the EMAT command trailer to facilitate the exercise. The training scenario included interoperable communications as well as a live assessment of the time required to demobilize and redeploy the trailer and its assets.
The trailer, which was purchased in 2010 through a grant from the Illinois Terrorism Task Force (ITTF), is designed to allow an eight person team to be self sufficient when responding to a disaster. The 24-foot trailer contains a myriad of equipment including a weather station, radio tower, multiple mobile radios, a map plotter/printer, work stations, television monitors and a 30-kilowatt generator.
Additional equipment on the EMAT trailer also includes a cache of portable radios used for field operations and four base radios for stationary operations. “When we travel to a stricken community, team members have the ability to operate on communication systems available in the area,” said Curtis Hawk McLean County EMA Director. Because the team often is deployed into disaster sites with little or no technology assets, the EMAT trailer is equipped with a robust Information Technology (IT) infrastructure.
Throughout the exercise, EMAT members practiced generating various reports that would be required during a disaster response. These reports allow the team to identify gaps in training and equipment.
“It is vitally important that as a team we continually train and exercise together in order to ensure continuity of operations”, said Palatine EMA Coordinator Tom Smith. “What we have learned during our varied responses, is that it is extremely beneficial to be familiar with the strengths and skills of your fellow team members.”
This year alone, the EMAT has deployed to disasters in Illinois including the Harrisburg tornado and the Tiskilwa train derailment while a large contingent of EMAT members responded to the flooding in southern Illinois in 2011. Since its inception, the EMAT has responded to these and numerous other varied incidents. The EMAT also sent teams to southern Illinois for the floods in the spring of 2011.
EMAT members volunteered their time to participate on the team for this exercise with one member traveling from as far away as Franklin County. Additionally, two graduates from the Western Illinois University Emergency Management program interns also participated.
The Emergency Management Assistance Team is a state-wide mutual aid network that is sponsored by the Illinois Emergency Services Management Association (IESMA). The team is on call everyday to support any jurisdiction in the state where a disaster strikes.