MORRIS COUNTY — The Morris County Office of Emergency Management participated in the Gotham Shield Exercise for Emergency Medical Services (EMS) which is currently on-going at the MetLife Stadium in Rutherford.
The Gotham Shield is a FEMA functional exercise involving federal, state, county and local jurisdictions including New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. The exercise that we are participating in today involved an Improvised Nuclear Device (IND) detonation which occurred in the NJ/NY metropolitan area. The purpose of the exercise was to evaluate the entire response effort for an IND attack. Our challenge today, involved arriving at MetLife Stadium where thousands of people were assembled (notional) and in need of care. Our mission was to assess, treat, and evacuate casualties to hospitals and facilities away from the impact site.
The training exercise did not involve any “real” patients. However, we were challenged to exercise our plans, procedures, and equipment to simulate our actions throughout the expanded scenario.
The Morris County Office of Emergency Management along with our partners from the Morris County Park Police, responded to the MetLife stadium complex with our Mobile Ambulance Bus (MAB) which is capable of treating/transporting large numbers of injured individuals or serving as part of a larger triage system to assess patients prior to being prioritized for transportation by other EMS assets to an appropriate medical facility.
Today’s large scale exercise focused on multiple emergency response agencies coming together from multiple states for the purpose of drilling logistics and equipment resources, while working with each other within the framework of a large scale mass casualty event. In Morris County, they plan for the worst and hope for the best.
The Morris County Office of Emergency Management prides themselves on the capability to respond to the worst case scenario, and today’s exercise provided a framework for dealing with the type of event they hope they never experience.
