Critical incident training for Chatham Co. emergency crews

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By Justin Burrows - email

SAVANNAH, GA (WTCO) - There are situations in life that you can never prepare for but there are never enough situations to be prepared.

Savannah-Chatham police held a critical incident training and opened it to various emergency response units in Chatham County.

They're using a miniaturized version of Savannah to train for a variety of disaster scenarios.

"This is training that we've never had here before. this is training that's going to directly impact our department and it's training that is going to directly impact our community," said training director Gary Taylor.

"Many people think it's what they do every day, but these incidents we look at, the barricaded gunmen, the hazmat scene, the explosion, officers don't have a lot of experience because fortunately they don't occur a lot," said BowMac instructor Vince Faggiano.

They may not occur a lot, but they do occur. This training takes specific aim at getting first responders ready for emergencies like the explosion at Imperial Sugar in 2008.

"It puts you in that position and if you practice now you'll be able to do it when really does occur, like last year when they had the sugar refinery explosion, having this training will help me better prepare," said Sgt. Michelle Halford.

"Unfortunately we don't find out how good it is or how good we do, or how good we don't do until a critical incident such as the magnitude of the sugar refinery or warehouse fire or chemical spill. It impacts lives, it impacts our community," said Taylor.

While they can't fully prepare for those situations, they can practice in hopes to minimize their impact on our community.

Students were participated in the hands-on exercise at the Metro Training Facility and was conducted by BowMac Educational Services, a homeland-security certified course.