Greenville College Takes Part in Emergency Planning Exercise
Published: April 13, 2021
On Tuesday, Nov. 4, the city of Greenville conducted an exercise addressing emergency procedures and testing the response time of First Responders. The exercise targeted the dissemination or possible administration of pharmaceuticals in case of a large-scale outbreak, namely Ebola. By testing the efficiency of the First Responders, Greenville is demonstrating their readiness to look to the future and protect their citizens.
Greenville College partnered with the city of Greenville, the Bond County Health Department, the Bond County Sheriffs Department, the Greenville Police Department, Greenville Regional Hospital, and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville for this exercise. These services exist to provide aid to Bond County in time of need, and this planning session was able to demonstrate how even though they are all separate entities, they have one common goal of protecting Bond Countys residents. Because these groups have different specialties, their participation was able to provide insight into unique fields for the students and employees to understand emergency procedures. Greenville College provided both faculty and student volunteers that assisted in the training program. Some of the volunteers included, but are not limited to, faculty members Dr. Norm Hall, Dr. Eugene Dunkley, Jo Branscome, and Pam Miller, and students Jonathan Moua, Christian Semanik, Taylor Smith, and Ryan Stakes.
The event tested the First Responders by the volunteers participating as players and timekeepers in a mock emergency exercise. The overall goal of this experiment was for the emergency services to practice and improve their response times and safety methods. Not only did this program target their individual methods, but it also focused on collaboration of these response groups.
This was the City of Greenvilles first major step towards large-scale emergency preparation, and they are not alone in this endeavor. Several universities and cities across the country are conducting training sessions like this in preparation for the future. Greenville College will benefit greatly from this training exercise because it showed the processes required in case of an emergency. Since GC was able to collaborate with Greenvilles First Responders, the staff and students had an opportunityto see the city of Greenville from outside the college.
GC extends a gracious thank you to those who came and participated in the event, as they were working to make Greenville more safe for those who live and work here. This training exercise has helped to prepare for the future and is keeping GC at the forefront of safety preparation.
