A helicopter team, divers, and EMS workers surrounded Mauch Chunk Lake Park on Monday evening, responding to a 911 call for two missing swimmers.
The call, however, was not real. Carbon County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) staged Monday’s event as a full-scale training and as an opportunity for the public to get a sense of what managing crises looks like.
Mark Nalesnik, Carbon County EMA Coordinator, said scenarios like these prepare first responders to communicate in complex situations with multiple emergency agencies.
“We call it interoperability among the agencies and this gave them the opportunity to get some practice at that,” Nalesnik said.
Carbon County Commissioner Chris Lukasevich said full-scale training events allow responders to hone their skills for real emergencies where there is precious time to plan their response.
“We can try all the different elements and aspects of a potential rescue or recovery if it turns into that unfortunate incident,” Lukasevich said.
Responders practiced both types of situations – a rescue of an eight-year-old child mannequin and a recovery of an adult mannequin from the water.
The county’s new responders, including three nearly-certified volunteer firefighters and several first-year lifeguards, got hands-on, risk-free training with agencies they may not have worked with before. Lukasevich stressed the importance of including young responders in their training sessions.
“You want to bring [new responders] in and give them [an] understanding of…what is the expectation of how they would operate when they’re no longer simply just a novice individual, but they become seasoned [professionals]. Again, this starts to condition them to the environment we expect them to operate [in],” said Lukasevich.
Park Lifeguard Supervisor Ethan Turrano said he hopes that Carbon County’s EMA will continue making its full-scale training more life-like for newer lifeguards.
“The only thing I wish we would’ve had [differently] was the ability to have a crowd here… because a crowd will want to help. A crowd may also want to impede on what you’re doing,” said Turrano.
After training, the agencies held a debriefing session for their responders, allowing them to share what they learned from the crisis: their successes, mistakes, and what they plan to improve for future emergencies. Like a debriefing after a real emergency, Monday’s debriefing was kept private among responders. WVIA News was allowed to sit-in, but not to document the meeting.
