Steve Burns
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON – (WMAL) Police and fire departments conduct drills regularly to practice all kinds of scenarios, but this one is a bit different. Authorities in Maryland, DC, and Virginia are practicing their response to a coordinated terror attack on the Washington region.
Two chiefs asked about the drill remained coy about the specific scenarios and situations they’ll find themselves in Wednesday, but said it’s been inspired by recent events.
“It’ll be an event that will involve causalities and concerns,” Prince George’s County Police Chief Hank Stawinski told WMAL. “We can’t get into the specifics of it, but it’ll replicate things you’ve seen around the world over the last couple of years.”
The drills are set to take place in six separate locations around the region – in Northeast and Southeast DC, along with Fairfax, Arlington, and Prince George’s Counties. Officials also said it will last most of the day Wednesday, from 8:30am to 4:00pm.
“You have, gosh, probably almost two dozen different agencies from across the National Capitol Region,” Metro Transit Police Chief Ron Pavlik told WMAL. “The public’s going to see a large police response, fire and EMS response across the region. It’s a pretty significant event.”
The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, which is coordinating the drill, said specific neighborhoods where drill action is taking place have been notified ahead of time.
“If a terrible thing happens, God forbid, we don’t want to be figuring out relationships and the deployment of resources on the fly,” Stawinski said. “We want to have a point of reference, and that’s what this drill is about.”
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