WHITBY FREE PRESS, WEDNESDAY, MAY 1, 1985, PAGE 21 Red Cross holds disaster excercise By MARC VINCENT Free Press Staff On Friday, April 28, an undetermined emergency in the Metro Toronto area necessitated the evacuation of 150 residents to Whitby. At 9 a.m. Saturday, the supervisor for the Red Cross in Whitby, Diane Mclellan, received a call from the Emergency Members Organization in Toronto to set up an emergency evacuation center at Henry Street High School. Mclellan called a breakdown of the town and its administration should the unexpected arise. Anything is possible in the exercise and par- ticipants are expected to respond. "In the middle of the exercise I could decide that the school power supply has suddenly faulted. It would then be up to us to go out and find a generator," said Mclellan. It is the first time the Red Cross in Durham region has been in- volved in the exercise which simulates an cies necessary to main- tain the smooth operation. "The course concen- trates on flexibility," said David Gregory, the Red Cross chairman for the Oshawa area,' "you must be able to do anything from directing traffic to running an emergency field station." In Saturday's exer- cise, the emergency took place on Friday and the initial response had already occured but the Oshawa/Whitby area has been informed that another evacuation whereabouts and inform Whitby communication place. achool cafeteria Dnuyt- the parties involved. center is run by the As part of his hobby, fel keeps in contact The Canadian Radio South Pickering an FM transmitter and with the other centers in Relay League are ham Amateur Radio club. receiver is carried Newmarket, Aurora, radio operators who as Peter Schuyffel is the around in his car along North Peel, part of their licensing co-ordinator for the club with the equipment Mississauga, North must be prepared to run and was informed on necessary to set up the York and Etibicoke. The communications in case Saturday morning that communication center. central registery is of an emergency. The an exercise was taking in the corner of the CONT'D ON PG. 24 A vital part of last Saturday's disaster exercise held by the local bran- ches of the Canadian Red Cross was the practise of first aid. In the photo above Carol Northam, chairman of the Ajax/Pickering Red Cross is seen here giving first aid to Kim O'Brien, one of the volun- teer vFree Press Staff Photo several Red Cross volunteers in the area including the chairman of the Red Cross evacuation teams from Oshawa, Ajax, Pickering, Bowmanville and Uxbridge. At 10 a.m. the school cafeteria of the Henry Street becomes an evacuation center. The Canadian Radio Relay League sets up a ham radio installation in the corner of the cafeteria and monitors the traffic from the other evacuation centers in the Toronto area. The rest of Saturday is then spent conducting what is officially called Pulse 1985, an exercise to respond to an emergency with evacuation centers in the areas east of Toron- to to accept any over- flow of evacuees. The exercise is designed to test com- munities peacetime evacuation procedures. According to Mclellan each town has its own evacuation plans that designate where centers can be set up, who con- tacts are in other emergency services and emergency like the train derailment in Mississauga in which half the city had to be evacuated. According to the peacetime evacuation plans the Red Cross is responsible for organizing evacuation centres, providing food, and general assistance to the evacuees. The Canadian Radio Relay League, made up of Ham Radio operators, is in charge of com- munication in case the telephone system is out of order. St Johns Am- bulance provides first aid and transportation to the hospitals and the police ensure the evacuation takes place in an orderly fashion. In order to complete its task efficiently the Red Cross trains volun- teers in a one day seminar on the mechanics of operating an evacuation center. The course, which is funded by the provincial government and donations to the Red Cross prepares par- ticipants in the likely problems that would arise and the contingen- center must be opened to take in an overflow from Toronto. "The exercise is essentially a paper evacuation, the 150 evacuees are ail fictious names from a preplan- ned list and we have to pretend that they are actually here," Mclellan said. Beside the back doors of the high school a registration desk is manned by Red Cross volunteers. The names of the evacuees are processed and the list sent to a central registery in Toronto to keep track of which shelters the evacuees were taken to. Among the 150 evacuees are sup- posedly 10 people who are worried about the whereabouts of some of their family. An inquiry is sent through the Ham Radio operator to cen- tral registery fo find out the location of the missing relatives. Although the people do not exist the lists of the various centers have been organized and it is up to central registery to discover their 1 Qhlivr-