Realistic disaster scene played out at Burl's Creek to sharpen skills of first responders
Some realistic-looking scenes played out at Burl's Creek in Oro-Medonte Tuesday as emergency response teams participated in a mock training exercise to prepare them for real-life disasters.
The large-scale simulated emergency scenarios involved volunteers in the role of victims, and police, paramedics and firefighters on the Burl's Creek event grounds in Oro Station.
Tuesday's exercise is meant to help emergency personnel sharpen their skills and better prepare for an actual disaster.
'So, what we simulated today is a concert outdoors,' explained Grant Durfey, manager of Emergency Management County of Simcoe. 'There's been a severe weather system that came in, lots of wind, lightening struck the stage and caused part of the stage to collapse, injuring a fair number of people.'
'These situations are made to be a realistic as possible to ensure our response dictates how we would react in a real situation,' said Orillia OPP Staff Sgt. Brent Elbers.
As part of the training event, the responders are pushed to prioritize the injured, determine who needs what help and what to do next.
'Anytime you can bring this many agencies together to work towards a common goal there's usually a lot of take away here that certainly will benefit anybody that might require our services,' said Oro-Medonte Fire Chief Roree Payment.
'It's an overall coordination of where do we get resources to where they need to go,' said Durfey. 'Also coordinating with hospitals - where do we send these patients? They can't all go to the same hospital.'
The mock disaster training exercise started around 10 a.m. and wrapped up around 2 p.m. Information gathered from the training will be utilized in future mass casualty training.
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They haven't even experienced the other school calendar,' he told CP24 during an interview late last week. Tony Pontes' new school year started at the end of July and while it wraps up at the end of June like other schools in the Peel District School Board (PDSB) and has the same number of days of learning, the weeks it has off in between are very different from the regular school calendar. Two other elementary schools in Peel - Roberta Bondar Public School and Ray Lawson Public School, both in Brampton - also follow the balanced school calendar model, while a fourth, Peel Alternative School Central, has a modified calendar, offering a different schedule than the traditional September to June school year. To compensate for the shortened summer break, balenced calendar schools in Peel have a week off in October, three weeks off over the December holiday, another week in February and a two-week-long March Break. Roberto Sarjoo Caledon father of 3 Roberto Sarjoo is the co-chair of the Tony Pontes Public School council. (Supplied) Sarjoo and his family have lived in Caledon's Southfields Village, a relatively new residential community bounded by Heart Lake Road, Highways 410 and 10 and Old School Road, for about nine years. When they first moved into the area, Tony Pontes was under construction but they knew even then that it would be offering a balanced school calendar. 'I had previously heard about this model in the U.S. and I was curious about it. … I thought it was a pretty cool idea and I figured we could make it work,' he years later, Sarjoo, who is the co-chair of Tony Pontes' school council, has nothing but good things to say about his family's experience at the school. 'It's been a fantastic ride. It works fantastic for our family,' he said. 'The summer flies by incredibly fast. With three kids, it can be incredibly expensive to find care and camps for them.' 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