Evacuation drill tests city's emergency preparedness

Like a team practicing drills, Mayor Nutter and his senior managers yesterday were put through the paces of how they would handle an evacuation of Center City high-rises.

And their performance: Good, but with room for improvement.

The tabletop exercise in City Hall was the last of three emergency simulations held in the last month to test the ability of city leaders and emergency responders to manage evacuations.

"It's a good way for us to show what we can do," Managing Director Camille Cates Barnett said after the exercise.

Yesterday's scenario involved a massive power outage at 17th and Market Streets that escalated into a bigger transformer explosion and calamity on both sides of Broad Street.

"It started out as bad and just got worse," said MaryAnn Marrocolo, Philadelphia's emergency manager.

The other two exercises held recently involved an evacuation of South Philadelphia after a Phillies game and another evacuation of Center City, she said.

In the exercise, about two dozen city officials - including Mayor Nutter and Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey - sat around tables in Conversation Hall in City Hall.

They were presented with a scenario - electricity going out in a high-rise - and asked to walk through how they would respond. Variables were thrown into the mix: The power outage in one building was followed by a transformer explosion with injuries.

Marrocolo said the table-top exercises had identified areas that need improvement, such as coordinating communication with the media; making police rank and file more familiar with evacuation routes; and giving better direction to pedestrians during a crisis.

She added that drills like this were needed to test and hone the reactions of all city departments, including the mayor's office, the Fire and Police Departments, Public Health and Human Services.

Marrocolo said one tabletop exercise would not get all the kinks out of the city's evacuation plan, but "it gets people more familiar with it."

The Hurricane Katrina debacle in 2005 exposed the inability of New Orleans to manage a mass evacuation and prompted other cities like Philadelphia to examine their own plans.

Consultants hired by Mayor John F. Street singled out the city's lack of an evacuation plan as a major shortcoming in its emergency readiness.

Last April, the city's emergency management office unveiled a new master plan for how streets in the entire city would be used in the event of an evacuation.

Barnett said Philadelphia was "much improved" from where it was in 2005.

"We're making sure we all know what the evacuation plan is and how to work with it," she said. "That sets us apart."

The managing director added that any evacuation planning includes not just Philadelphia, but the entire region.

Everett Gillison, deputy mayor for public safety, added that Philadelphia was working with surrounding Pennsylvania counties and communities in South Jersey to develop strategies for the mass movement of people. "Philadelphia is not operating in a vacuum," he said.

Marrocolo said the city planned to conduct further exercises in the fall, with scenarios on how to shelter people and handle mass casualties.