- May 3, 2024
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Public Works Utility Engineer Mike Stephenson at the training simulation. Photo courtesy of Ormond Beach
Deputy Fire Chief Nate Quartier at the training simulation. Photo courtesy of Ormond Beach
Ormond Beach Fire Chief Howard Bailey giving a fake press conference at the simulation training. Photo courtesy of Ormond Beach
Ormond Beach Police Department Lt. Tom Larsen, Lt. John Borzner, Public Works Utility Engineer Mike Stephenson, Stormwater Supervisor Bobby Dudzin, Ormond Beach Fire Chief Howard Bailey, Deputy Fire Chief Nate Quartier and Building Maintenance Supervisor John Fowler. Courtesy photo
Ormond first responders and city employees recently participated in a county-wide, multi-agency training that simulated what would happen if a building collapsed in the Daytona Beach Shores area.
“Its so rare that we get to collaborate with other counterparts [ahead of a crisis],” said Pauline Dulang, a city of Ormond Beach public information officer.
The training was held in conjunction with the Federal Emergency Management Agency from April 15-18 at the Volusia County Emergency Operations Center with training presentations, collaborative, problem-solving discussions and a crisis simulation, a Volusia County press release said. The simulated crisis scenario was based on condominium building that collapsed in the Miami Surfside suburb in 2021, Dulang said.
The Surfside building — called the Champlain Towers — collapse killed 98 people and is still under investigation, even three years later, according to an NPR report. The initial findings of the investigation point to a weakness in the concrete used to build and support the pool deck, the report said.
Dulang said the FEMA team leaders organizing the training based the simulation on a similar, fabricated condominium at a fake address. The teams picked a real street in the Daytona area to base the logistical information off of, like emergency response time, population and organizational efforts.
From Ormond Beach, Dulang said, herself and seven others attended: Ormond Beach Police Department Lt. Tom Larsen, Lt. John Borzner, Public Works Utility Engineer Mike Stephenson, Stormwater Supervisor Bobby Dudzin Ormond Beach Fire Chief Howard Bailey, Deputy Fire Chief Nate Quartier and Building Maintenance Supervisor John Fowler.
Quartier said his biggest takeaway was the opportunity they had to work with the interlocal partners that would come together for a crisis like this.
"Developing those relationships is key to an effective response and recovery,” he said.
Participants in the program assumed roles aligned with their real-life positions during emergencies, in order to enhance preparedness and collaborative response efforts across the community, the press release said. Dulang said she was in a Joint Information Center with other PIOs, sharing and collating information on the response.
Dulang said it was a great networking experience, a chance to know her counterparts and work out communication kinks before an emergency actually happens.
"It's really great that we get to come together and prepare on a scenario that isn't real," she said. "We don't want the first time that we're meeting somebody during an emergency."
It also gave her new perspective, she said, on all the things that need to be considered in such an emergency situation — including, handling the recovery process of a mass fatality event, what the community is like and if any specific religious figures should be present as fatalities are recovered.
"It's just also thinking ahead, like who are the populations that are affected and how can we best, you know, make this less traumatic for them ... while keeping in mind all the logistics," Dulang said.
Fire Chief Howard Bailey said any training opportunity between municipalities and the county pays dividends in the future.
"Every opportunity we have to come together as a group, countywide, to exercise our skills and abilities, and to plan for future incidents is key into having a successful, mitigation of any incident,” Bailey said.
