(Woodbury) – A Full Scale Exercise* involving personnel and equipment resources from Gloucester County, Woodbury and volunteers will be held at the Colonial Park Apartments this Sunday, Sept. 24 from 8 to 11 a.m.
The Gloucester County Housing Authority will be assessing the validity of their Emergency Response Plan/Procedures, and had asked Gloucester County Office of Emergency Management to assist them in designing, conducting and evaluating an exercise that would involve evacuating the Colonial Park Apartments, assessing the incident management coordination among the participating response agencies, and evaluating the Housing Authorities ability and processes for accounting for all the displaced/injured and/or relocated residents . Exercises like this help our agencies test their plans, find any unanticipated gaps and learn valuable lessons in case of a true emergency.
Volunteers from the police explorers and scouts will serve as residents/victims during the exercise. Colonial Park Apartment residents will remain in their units during the exercise. Colonial Park Apartments is located at 401 South Evergreen Ave., Woodbury, NJ (200 Unit Elevator Complex for the Elderly)
Freeholder Dep. Director Giuseppe (Joe) Chila, Liaison to the Department of Public Safety, said, “There are many hours of planning and training that our emergency responders put in, and they work closely with other public agencies like hospitals, nursing homes, and the Housing Authority to make sure their plans work when put into action.”
Participants will include the Housing Authority of Gloucester County, Woodbury Fire and Police Departments, other mutual aid fire companies, Woodbury Office of Emergency Response, the County’s Emergency Response Department that includes County OEM, County Communications, and County EMS, and the County’s Div. of Transportation Services.
Road Closure:
Evergreen Ave., from the circle/intersection at Glassboro Rd. to East Barber Ave., will likely be closed for the duration of the Exercise, on the morning of Sept. 24 from 7:30 to 11 a.m. (Residents living in the neighborhood adjacent to that stretch of Evergreen Rd. can use Andy Snyder Blvd. to access E. Barber/Tanyard Rd. or the Circle for Glassboro Rd. & S. Evergreen Ave.).
*The term Full Scale Exercise is used to describe an exercise event which involves multiple agencies/organizations, necessitates the physical movement and use of personnel/equipment, utilizes Exercise Controllers and Evaluators to manage the flow of the exercise and observe and document what to place and whether the decisions made and actions taken by the participants conform with the existing (Emergency Response) Plans and Procedures.
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