Warren OEM Director: 'In the Drill, Everything is Real—Even Blood'

Imagine this: After a cult party, where animal sacrifices were performed, two young women remain lost in the large wooded area of Glenwood Meadows off Mountain Avenue after being attacked by 10 boys. All of the young men and women in the cult were smoking and drinking.

This was the scenario the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) dealt with during a large-scale drill on Saturday morning, an exercise intended to prepare the town’s emergency service personnel in the event of a large disaster.

The drill involved Warren’s OEM acting as the incident commander, the township’s rescue squad, emergency medical technicians (EMTs), the fire department, fire police, police department, members of Somerset County Search and Rescue and Warren’s community emergency response (CERT) team.

Drills like the one Saturday are held only two or four times a year, but are carried out as realistic as possible.

“In the drill, everything is real—even blood,” Warren’s OEM Director Jane Asch said. “But for some things, we made an assumption. In a true emergency like this, we would have a helicopter and dogs out here as well.”

Each emergency team was given specific assignments for the field search on Saturday. When crews arrive on the scene of an incident, the first report is to the incident commander. The incident commander then hands out assignments as needed based on the scene.

A search-and-rescue team consists of 10 or more people standing 30 feet apart in a line to comb the area as throughly as possible.

“It takes a lot of resource and equipment to conduct a field search like this,” said Doug Vornlocker, Somerset County OEM director and head of the county’s search and rescue. “From the county side, we hope that in conducting drills like this, we continue to build relationships with the emergency responders at the municipal level."

Vornlocker said that one of the goals of Saturday’s drill was to see how well the county was able to work with local law enforcement.

“This is the first time that we have had a local law enforcement agency participate and take on a role in the drill,” Vornlocker said.

That’s important, as law enforcement is typically the first in a municipality to arrive on a scene. By way of process, police will assess a scene and determine if additional resources are needed.

“All parties involved need to understand what our protocol is and we need to understand what their protocol is,” said Det. Kevin Gallagher, of the Warren Police Department. “We would arrive on the scene and make a determination as to whether OEM needed to be mobilized.”

This process closely mirrors escalation and involvement at town, county, state and government level as well.

In the event of an emergency, “typically the municipality is first level of response.” Vornlocker said. “Each town in the state has an emergency management coordinator. That role determines whether to involve another municipality, the county, then the state and finally, government.”