There was a chemical leak, a mass sickness and a bomb scare at Potomac Mills mall Wednesday morning.
Luckily, it was all a drill.
About a dozen police cars, fire trucks and ambulances met with mall security officials to practice responding to a large-scale disaster.
“Basically we want to make sure that our logistics and procedures are up to speed so that if some kind of disaster happened here, we’d be ready,” said David Beverly, assistance director of public safety at Potomac Mills.
Beverly said mall security conducts one large, live training exercise like Wednesday’s each year and conducts other smaller drills quarterly.
During the drill, part of the parking lot by the Sears outlet was blocked off with caution tape, as police, security officers and fire and rescue workers simulated responding to the disaster.
For the drill, authorities were imagining a crowded Saturday at the mall, when a airborne chemical made several people sick in the food court, said Benjamin Ishmael, security operations supervisor at the mall.
Security officers evacuated the mall, and several would-be patients sat on a nearby sidewalk to be treated by rescue workers, while fire officials, wearing masks, went into the mall.
The simulation then had a plot twist. A “bomb” in a backpack in the food court area went off while the mall was being evacuated, Ishmael said, causing the mall to contact the police department’s bomb squad.
Police Sgt. Charles Begley was running the command center during the drill and going over aerial images and maps of the mall, planning the police response.
Police and mall officials said Wednesday morning’s drill went well, and helped them identify things they need to work on in the event of an actual disaster.
“We hope that nothing like this happens here, but in the event it does, we’ll be ready,” Beverly said.
Staff writer Amanda Stewart can be reached at 703-530-3908.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement