Remain Calm, It’s Just a Drill
Don’t panic: EMS plans mock disaster drill Sunday
Nickerson Field, best known as home field of several BU sports teams, will be the site of a two-hour casualty exercise on Sunday, April 11, beginning at noon. Boston University will conduct a test of both campus and Boston Emergency Medical Services. Known as the Exercise Plan, or ExPlan, the drill is part of the BU EMS annual training program.
BU EMS training coordinator Laura Harwood says Sunday’s ExPlan “is a follow-up to a tabletop exercise conducted in March,” with EMS members expected to put to the test what they learned in the classroom.
The exercise will assess how well BU EMS and Boston EMS work together under the Incident Command System, as required by the National Incident Management System, part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As part of an ongoing cooperative public safety partnership between the BU, Boston, and Brookline public safety departments, the BU plan was produced with the input of the Operation Clarissima Exercise Design Team.
Peter Fiedler (COM’77), BU vice president for administrative services, says the ExPlan will test EMS functionality within the University through a simulated bleacher collapse at Commencement.
Besides BU EMS and Boston EMS, the BU Police Department, BU Emergency Response Planning, Samaritan Ambulance, and representatives from the Conference of Boston Teaching Hospitals will participate.
Students living in West Campus will receive a BU Alert on Sunday warning them of the drill, but will otherwise not be affected by the exercise, says Fiedler.
Nicole Rojas can be reached at nrojas@bu.edu; follow her on Twitter at @nrojas0131.
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