LAFAYETTE PARISH — The Lafayette Parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness held a scenario-based tabletop exercise to test their emergency plan and identify needed changes in preparation for hurricane season.
The exercise tested the plan with real participants, including medical special needs assistance, paratransit bus transportation, and animal registration processes.
"We really wanted to test that plan real time with real players, test any medical special needs that may need assistance and transportation on paratransit type buses, animals that come with some of the owners, making sure we're going through the registration process properly, we identify the pets with the owners of those pets we try to keep them transported together so you, we have real players today. The community has come in to help us with volunteers," said Christina Dayries, chief of staff for Lafayette Consolidated Government.
The event took place Friday morning at the Emergency Operations Center and included a full-scale exercise of loading buses.
OHSEP's next readiness event is a free shelter operations and trauma-informed care training scheduled for Saturday, June 6.
