The scene was chaotic:
Smoke billowed from windows of a hotel near Fulton County Airport. Cars were overturned in the parking lot, tossed about like toys from a suspected terrorist blast. Bloodied victims, attendees of a conference at the hotel, staggered out of the hotel’s front doors.
But this wasn’t a real-life crisis. It was a training exercise organized by ARC’s Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness Department to prepare the region for a potential large-scale incident.
The exercise, held last fall, included emergency responders from the City of Atlanta and five metro Atlanta counties – Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, and Gwinnett.
During the day-long exercise, emergency personnel responded in real-time to a suspected terrorist attack at the hotel that caused structural damage, mass injuries, and mass fatalities.
At a nearby second hotel, law enforcement, including SWAT and bomb teams, pursued suspects and work to free hostages. Emergency personnel faced a fast-changing situation that put their training to the test and identified areas needing improvement.
“While local, state, and federal officials do everything they can to prevent major incidents like terrorist attacks, it’s critical that our region be prepared to respond should anything occur,” said Bernard Coxton, Director of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness at ARC.
“Joint exercises such as this will also help train first responders from different jurisdictions to work together, just as they would have to do during a real emergency.”
What’s Next ATL, produced by the Atlanta Regional Commission, is a community resource that explores how metro Atlanta is growing and changing, and how the region is addressing its most pressing challenges.
