HOUGHTON — Several local emergency responder groups participated in a disaster preparedness training Tuesday on Michigan Tech’s campus.

The goal of the training was, “to evaluate our readiness to respond to situations,” said Chief Brian Cadwell of the university’s police department, who led the exercise. “We do these every so often. We do tabletop exercises and live exercises like this, to see how well we work together with different agencies.”

Many groups attended the training, including Michigan Tech Public Safety, the Houghton County Sheriff’s Department, Michigan State Police, and police from the cities of Houghton and Hancock, as well as two EMS teams and the Emergency Measures Coordinator from Gogebic County.

“It’s everybody who would be responding in the event of a real emergency,” Cadwell explained. 

The training consisted of a live simulation of an active assailant in the Student Development Complex. Officers received a mock call from an emergency dispatcher and rushed to the SDC.

They went through the steps of sweeping the building in an attempt to locate the fake assailant. During the exercise, they received another dispatcher report that the “assailant” had moved to the Gates Tennis Center. Responders moved to the tennis center, where they neutralized the assailant.

MTU EMS and Mercy EMS also practiced their roles in the disaster. Once an area was declared no longer “hot,” or a high-danger area, EMS entered the buildings to treat “injured” people inside. 

Cadwell was very satisfied with how the training went, saying, “It went well. I was in the command center, radio communication went very well, coordination went well, everyone did what they were supposed to.”

Cadwell is also confident in his team’s ability to handle a real disaster or emergency situation. 

When asked why they do the training, Cadwell responded it was for, “Readiness. We want to be prepared. It’s a safe area, so you have to work like it’s a safe area, but be ready for the worst thing that can happen.” 

Disaster trainings such as these are hosted frequently. Tabletop scenarios are common. These don’t involve the full-scale enactments, like the Tuesday’s training, but they still help emergency responders prepare for situations they may encounter.

The live disaster trainings happen every couple of years. They are not only used to train police and members of EMS, but also the Incident Command Team. This group is made up of students from MTU who have skills in areas like hosing fires, or other emergency response tasks.

Cadwell explained that if a disaster were to happen, there will still be a lot of work to do after the situation is resolved by police. That’s where the Incident Command Team steps in.

“We’ll have different things that need to be taken care of,” Cadwell said. “They manage that situation.”