If you’re on campus tomorrow and you see a large number of emergency service workers, don’t be alarmed — UBC is running an emergency training exercise tomorrow at Main Mall and Agronomy Road from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The exercise is a real-time simulation of an event where someone drives a delivery truck through a crowd of participants at the start of a 4,000 athlete half-marathon on campus. The simulation will see police officers pretending to shoot the driver upon exiting the vehicle. Emergency services such as first responders, ambulances, firefighters and the RCMP will then begin triaging the victims, treating their mock injuries, putting them into emergency vehicles and setting up an emergency operations centre. Meanwhile, UBC’s public relations staff will practice publishing information about the attack on social media.
According to UBC Chief Risk Officer Rob Holton, the exercise will involve about 200 people. Volunteers and UBC staff will be participating, as well a variety of external emergency services including the RCMP, Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services, BC Emergency Health Services and St. John Ambulance.
“It’s an opportunity for not only us to test our emergency response capabilities, but it’s an opportunity for [our external emergency partners] to test their response capabilities in a UBC context,” said Holton.
UBC Risk Management Services regularly does emergency exercises, but they’re often just facilitated discussions in which they talk through what they would do in an emergency scenario. The exercise on June 28 will be their first real-time simulation exercise in four years — that simulation was directed more so towards dealing with multiple shooters on campus.
While tomorrow's exercise is meant to prepare the university for an emergency event involving a vehicle being used as a weapon, Holton acknowledges that the exercise won’t be able to capture the high levels of alarm and panic that would occur in a real emergency. He hopes, through this simulation, that the university will be able to at least be better prepared to work through the chaos.
“That’s why you practice — to try to improve the capability of the people here at UBC and also the first responders … to respond in a real-life situation where there may be panic and a certain amount of chaos as victims and bystanders mill around trying to figure out what’s happened. We’re hoping that, by practicing it, we can improve our ability to deal with that kind of situation in a calm and measured and professional way.”
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