Large-scale hurricane rescue simulation takes over Disaster City, area lakes

COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) – If you saw a helicopter around the Brazos Valley Wednesday, it was most likely a training exercise from Disaster City.

Two hundred first responders from 25 agencies or military units put themselves into a hurricane scenario, practicing what they’ll do when the next storm hits. Crews used local bodies of water like the Brazos River, Lake Bryan and Lake Somerville. Hurricane season begins June 1 and these local, state and national responders are preparing for the worst.

“This training is where all of that starts,” Texas A&M Task Force 1 member, Trevor Stokes, said. “The big thing is, we are working with people that we haven’t worked with previously, to build those relationships and ensure that we have those in place so that when we do show up to respond to serve the residents of Texas that we’re not working through some barriers that may or may not even be there.”

The Texas A&M Task Force and TEEX have hosted this event for almost a decade. Director Jeff Saunders said in the past, they saw some gaps in their response to major disasters.

“It’s really from After Action Reviews that we had from Hurricane Harvey. During Harvey, we realized that some of the communications between aircraft weren’t the best at times. We also realized that we needed to be able to have better ground coordination. So we devised an exercise and this is really the culmination of that after seven years,” he said. “We always try to study for the test. And for us even though we do severe weather and floods pretty much year-round at this point the test to us is really a hurricane making landfall in the state of Texas. We want to make sure that all the partners are ready when that time comes.”

Experts have been warning for months that this year is expected to be an active hurricane season. Texas A&M Atmospheric Sciences Professor says this should be used as a warning.

“Every indication I’ve seen points to a very active season,” he said. “Its basically like an annual wake-up call to remember that this is a threat over the next several months.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will release its 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Outlook report on Thursday. This will provide crews and civilians guidance on how to best prepare for the season.