As I noted earlier in the week, the parking garage at the Regal Constellation Hotel east of the Toronto International Airport is being torn down. On Friday Public Safety Canada used the partially demolished garage as the site of a large-scale disaster exercise with close to 1,000 participants, observers, and evaluators.
A Canadian Press article on Canoe.ca describes the exercise:
The realistic scenario, designed to look like the aftermath of a car bombing of an office tower, included rescuing and treating scores of mock victims covered in fake blood or with simulated injuries.
Dogs sniffed out "victims" from beneath twisted cement and steel, while rescuers working in sub-zero temperatures used jackhammers to drill their way through concrete walls and clambered through the holes.
Others, decked out in full protective gear, built wooden support structures to stabilize the partially collapsed building, requested specific assistance as they encountered difficulties, or called for stretchers to ferry the wounded.
In a tent hospital set up nearby, dozens of doctors, nurses and other medical personnel treated the "wounded," who sported a variety of horrific "injuries" from broken bones to impaled metal.