The Town of High River has wrapped up a two-day large-scale emergency exercise that has left the people who take care of everything and everyone in a much better place.

For the last two days emergency workers and staff have been working on what to do if a tornado touched down in High River in Montrose and at Highwood High School.

The students got in on the action getting painted with fake blood and having fake wounds, after which firefighters had to rescue them from various parts of the school.

There were 20 organizations represented in the exercise.

The Town puts on the large-scale exercise every four years and this year it happened on the last week of work for Director of Emergency Management, Carly Benson.

She starts her new job with the City of Vancouver on Monday, but adds there was a lot to learn over the past two days.

"Lots of learning, not just for the Town," said Benson. "But lots of other people took lessons away how to make their own organizations or their own municipalities better. That is what these are all about we don't get to hold them every year so it is really important to share the learning opportunities."

One area they are making great gains in is in technology. They were able to use a drone which greatly speed up how they collect damage assessments.

"It is important for us to practice using that technology in exercises where we can play with it and make mistakes and learn from it and figure out how to use it to the maximum potential."

With the drone they had the information six hours later instead of a week, which will help the emergency centre make decisions faster.

The other technology they tested out was a new app.

All of the damage assessment information was sent back to the emergency centre in real time and they were able to make decisions on how to respond immediately instead of much later.

And in the case of a real emergency the information could be shared with home owners so they are aware of what is going on.

 

If you see something we should know about e-mail us at news@highriveronline.com