Imagine this: It’s a rainy, dreary day outside, but you need to run to the grocery store. As you drive down Veterans Highway (Route 413), everything seems fine at first. But as you turn onto Route 13, you suddenly drive into two feet of water, stalling your car. You call 9-1-1, and emergency services are dispatched to help.
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This was one of the many scenarios presented to emergency personnel from Bristol Township at a training event recently at the Bristol Township Senior Center.
The exercise was focused on how responders would use their resources in the event of a severe weather outbreak in the township, Bucks County’s second most populated.
The training was held in conjunction with masters students and staff of Thomas Jefferson University’s Disaster Medicine and Emergency Management program.
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David Nitsch, program director for Emergency and Disaster Management at Jefferson, said that the goal of this exercise was twofold.
“First, to test the response of emergency service entities during a significant severe weather event and their ability to work together to prioritize response and limited resources. Second, to partner with Bristol Township to provide an opportunity for our Masters students to work outside the classroom and deliver a “real-world” exercise to real-world practitioners,” he said.
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According to Kevin Dippolito, Bristol Township’s emergency management coordinator and fire marshal, participants were directed to “prioritize emergency calls, track personnel and resources, establish a unified command post, and coordinate mutual aid within the township, with limited intervention from 9-1-1 dispatchers.”
In groups, participants were asked to write down what they would do when the calls came in.
Using real locations in the township, a dispatcher “called” fire departments, ambulance centers, and officers to events that could occur during a severe weather event.
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Within the first three minutes, there were already eight calls to numerous events, such as a fire, a fallen person, an overturned tanker on Route 413, live wires on the road, and more.
And seven minutes in, a call came through for a tornado spotted near Route 413 and Route 13.
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Some non-emergency calls were mixed in for personnel to decide whether to give it priority over other events.
The tables simulated radio communication by talking to each other.
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During the training, crews went as far as dispatching resources from Upper Bucks County to respond.
But then, Dippolito announced that help from the other nearby counties was not coming, as they got hard hit as well.
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At 21 minutes, a unified command post was established.
The temporary command post was used to “enable all responsible agencies to manage an incident together by establishing a common set of incident objectives and strategies,” according to FEMA.
Forty minutes into the disaster, Route 13 had two feet of water on it.
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That’s when they revealed that the simulation was loosely based on real calls from the remnants of Hurricane Ida on Sept.1, 2021, which saw an EF-1 tornado cross the Burlington-Bristol Bridge, and flooding throughout the township.
Credit: Bristol Township Fire Rescue
Just two months prior, a more significant 100-year flash flood occurred in the township, caused by a rogue thunderstorm that sat over the area for hours.
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The Emergency and Disaster Management program originally started at the now defunct Philadelphia University in 2006, and was initially focused on medical emergency management only. Since then, the program has moved to Thomas Jefferson University, and has shifted to a general emergency management focus, according to Nitsch.
“Bristol Township is the first community that our students, studying Exercise Design, had the opportunity to design, deliver, and assess an exercise outside the classroom,” he said. “It is our hope that we will continue this partnership with Bristol Township and develop similar relationships with our communities.”
Nitsch deemed the training in Bristol Township a success.
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“Exercise participants were extremely happy with the exercise and the performance exceeded expectations. The point of exercises is not to ‘pass ‘ or ‘fail’; it is to identify opportunities for improvement of emergency plans, policies or procedures or to identify new issues to address in emergency planning and or response,” he said.
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