This Saturday, April 20, 2013, first responders and community volunteers will be training during a disaster drill in the Mountain Ranch area of Calaveras County from about 8 AM to 2 PM.
Agencies involved in Saturday's exercise include the Central Calaveras Fire-Rescue Protection District, Calaveras County Sheriff's Office of Emergency Services, Volunteers, and Reserves; CalFire, CHP, PG&E, PHI Inc. Helicopter Company, West Point Fire Protection District, the American Red Cross, Calaveras Works and Human Services, American Legion Ambulance, Ebbetts Pass Fire Protection District, Calaveras Amateur Radio Society, San Andreas Fire Protection District and the Calaveras Community Emergency Response Team volunteers.
The scenario involves the opening of an emergency shelter in Mountain Ranch simulating winter storm impacts with long term power outages county wide.
During that time, there will also be a simulated multi-casualty vehicle accident, prompting coordinated response from law enforcement, fire departments, emergency medical services, and trained volunteers.
Cave City Road is epected to remain open during this exercise, but may be reduced to one lane traffic control with no other road closures expected.
Please use caution and don't be alarmed by the number of emergency service vehicles, personnel, and helicopter in the Mountain Ranch area on Saturday.
This is the second annual planned counity disaster exercise (with last year's event taking place in the West Point/Wilseyville area).
Exercises such as this are important for training and testing ulti-agency responses from local and state resources, public/private partnerships, and use of trained Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), Red Cross and Amateur Radio volunteers' assistance.
The focus of this exercise is comunity integration into disaster planning while exercising portions of the Calaveras County Emergency Operations Plan and interoperable communications capabilities.
Calaveras County continues to adopt the Federal standard "whole community"approach when planning and preparing for disasters by including not only trained public agencies, but also utilizing our private industry partners and community volunteers.
Saturday's exercise is the culmination of months of planning and dedication by many individuals that make up Calaveras County's emergency management team.
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