Simulated terrorist incident draws emergency personnel to Union Station

Hundreds of actors and real emergency workers participated in a complex mass casualty simulation at Union Station Saturday night in an effort to be prepared for the possibility of a real attack.

By Tina Yazdani and News Staff

A chaotic but scripted scene unfolded in and outside of the busiest transit hub in the country early Sunday morning as one of the largest joint emergency exercises involving Toronto first responders took place.

Hundreds of actors along with dozens of the city’s paramedics, police, firefighters, city officials and mass transit personnel took part in the emergency response protocol to the simulated terrorist incident which began with one of the actors dressed as a gunman pretending to shoot at passengers disembarking a GO Train.

Paramedics took approximately seven minutes to respond to this scene and deal with the simulated gunshot victims.

*NOTE: None of the injuries are real but some of the images and sounds may be disturbing to some*

The emergency response stretched throughout the Great Hall and even outside Union Station itself.
 

Another scenario had firefighters battling a fake fire on one of the train platforms. As you can see, things did not initially go as planned as they appeared to have some trouble with the water hose before they got it working. One of the valuable lessons learned and the reason why they conduct these simulations.
 

Even the newest member of the Metrolinx Transit Safety team, Dash, got his first taste of the simulation.
 

Metrolinx says the exercises are meant to test not only the reaction of first responders but also internal responses in their command and control centre.

“Big thing is, how do we all work together, how do we prioritize our efforts and to do everything we can to preserve life and keep people safe,” said Steve Harvey, the exercise director at Metrolinx.

“This is a time and a place where we exercise our different standard operating procedures between those of ourselves and the agencies and we actually learn how to make our processes better to respond to the real thing should it ever happen,” said Metrolinx CEO Phil Verster.

The agency says similar emergency simulations conducted in April 2017 and September 2018 have helped improve emergency responsiveness in worst-case scenarios.

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