I just participated in the mother of all disaster drills at CAK. More than 400 emergency response personnel and volunteers gathered at CAK last Wednesday. Our goal: to test our coordinated effort to effectively and efficiently respond to a big disaster.

Todd Laps, our manager of all things safety and security, did an excellent job of pulling together 50 agencies from throughout the greater Akron/ Canton area to respond to a mock emergency. He worked closely with Summit and Stark county emergency management teams, Green Fire and EMS, the Red Cross, the Summit and Stark County Sheriff’s departments and a whole host of other groups.

Testing our ability to communicate with each other (remember 50 agencies) was a big goal. Let me just tell ya, it’s hard to communicate with 50 employees let alone 50 distinct agencies across multiple governmental lines! Well, all in all, I think we did well. Pretend victims were moved to local hospitals quickly, the pretend families were accommodated, the press was briefed and there were no big miscues. I for one learned a ton from this exercise. And in the end, that is the biggest benefit of these drills. We get better and better every time.