MARQUETTE, MI-- Marquette County Emergency Management officials are holding a disaster exercise in conjunction with Sawyer International Airport and two hospitals on Saturday.
Officials say the Emergency Response Full Scale Exercise will allow agencies to learn what to do if a disaster happens by testing communications, mutual aid, and emergency response procedures.
“Full-scale exercises are required to be conducted every three years at the airport and consists of emergency response agencies actually ‘playing the game’ on how their service would respond to an incident at the airport,” says Airport Manager Duane DuRay.
Fake patients will be placed at U.P. Health System Marquette and Bell.
“Currently we have about 60 volunteer patients to divide up between those three sites, but we can always use more,” says Teresa Schwalbach, Emergency Management Coordinator for Marquette County.
Officials say the hospitals want to test their ability to “surge” to large numbers of critically injured patients who arrive in a short period of time.
Participants will critique the exercise after it’s completed to identify and correct any deficiencies before an actual disaster occurs.
For more information or to volunteer, call 475-1134.
