Rochester, Rochester Hills Fire Departments to Respond to Simulated Tornado

On Thursday, firefighters and other personnel from dozens of fire departments across the state will participate in the largest full-scale deployment of fire services in Michigan’s history.

In southeast Michigan, firefighters and officers from more than a dozen departments, including the Rochester and Rochester Hills fire departments, will converge in the parking lot of The Palace of Auburn Hills – one of four locations chosen statewide to serve as a staging area for the Michigan Fire Service Mutual Aid Box Alarm System (MABAS) activation simulation exercise.

The exercise is designed to test emergency readiness during times of disaster, said Dr. Terry Fobbs, assistant to the Michigan State Fire Marshal.

“Everyone is pretty sensitive to what happened in Joplin, MO,” Fobbs said. “Michigan, over the past 40-50 years, has had about four EF5 tornadoes, so Michigan isn’t immune to that type of thing happening here.”

On the Enhanced Fujita (EF) scale, an EF5 tornado is the worst, most damaging tornado with sustained wind speeds of more than 200 miles per hour.

Last June, an EF2 tornado with wind speeds up to 135 miles per hour hit Dundee, MI, causing widespread damage to the area.

“We had resources come out of Washtenaw that provided urban search and rescue to rescue two people” who were trapped inside a building after the tornado hit, Fobbs said. “It really sent a message that it’s great to have this kind of system … in the event of a tornado.”

A real exercise for a fake disaster

Thursday’s 60-minute exercise will be centered on a simulated EF4 tornado that has hit the fictional Anytown, MI, and caused widespread devastation, high death tolls, injuries and building entrapment.

“What we’re doing is we’re assembling a minimum of four task forces in real time to respond to this fictional event,” Fobbs explained. “Basically, it’s a collaboration of various fire departments around the state to provide mutual aid.” 

Activation of fire services will begin at 2:20 p.m. Thursday, when an initiating call will be made to a statewide MABAS dispatch center in Lansing, which in turn will call dispatch centers in Saginaw, Bay, Muskegon, Ottawa, Berrien, Cass and Oakland counties.

“They will call the fire departments that are assigned; they use what is called a box card,” Fobbs explained. “Each of the reporting units will give a password” to help keep outside units from responding to the disaster.  “They will then move out and assemble at the assembly area.”

The four staging areas for Thursday’s exercise are The Palace of Auburn Hills; Saginaw Valley State University in University Center, MI; North Berrien Fire Department in Coloma, MI, and Nunica Fire Department in Nunica, MI. The operation is headquartered in Traverse City.

Thursday’s exercise at The Palace will be led by Independence Township Fire Chief Steve Ronk and Auburn Hills Fire Chief John Burmeister and will also include fire and EMS services from Troy, Novi, Milford, Independence Township, Groveland, Addison Township, Brandon Township, Auburn Hills, Oak Park, Oxford and Oakland Township.

Helping communities near and far

Most fire departments have mutual aid agreements with their neighboring communities, Fobbs said, citing the agreement between Rochester Hills and Auburn Hills as an example.

“MABAS expands this on a much larger basis,” he said.

Currently, 121 out of more than 1,000 Michigan fire departments are involved in MABAS, which began in Illinois more than 40 years ago and has spread to surrounding states, Fobbs said.

Fire services that are part of MABAS will pay for the first operational period of emergency services, though “they would be reimbursed for coming after one operational period,” Fobbs said. An operational period is usually 8-24 hours, but “it depends.”

Fobbs said they hope to soon include even more Michigan fire services in MABAS.

“The governor is really encouraging municipalities to look at ways to consolidate services and leverage services,” he said. “MABAS Michigan provides a way to do that in case of a serious incident or disaster where they’re overwhelmed.”