Carbon to participate in statewide weather emergency exercise

Carbon County will again participate in a statewide weather emergency exercise at the 911 Communications Center in Nesquehoning on Tuesday, March 1.

This exercise is part of Weather Emergency Preparedness Week, which was adopted by the Carbon County Commissioners during their Thursday meeting. Weather Emergency Preparedness Week is Feb. 28 through March 4.

Mark Nalesnik, coordinator of the Carbon County Emergency Management Agency, said the weather emergency exercise will be held for members of county emergency teams from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. The exercise will deal with severe weather related emergencies such as tornadoes, floods or high winds.

"We are preparing, upgrading, resupplying and assessing our EOC capabilities in anticipation that an EOC activation may become necessary. Flooding and high winds are typically what we end up dealing with during the upcoming spring season," he said.

During the exercise, the Communications Center will issue severe weather warnings, which will be placed on a message board at the facility. A group of organizations participating in the event will then be assigned to each incident. They will be responsible for overseeing its mitigation, write up an incident report and update information until the emergency is resolved.

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