Northville Psychiatric Hospital Grounds to Host First-Responders Drill

Several SWAT teams, bomb squads and Hazmat officers will descend on the former Northville Psychiatric Hospital grounds on Tuesday.

But don't worry, it's just a drill.

Northville Township is hosting 13 Southeast Michigan First Responder Specialty Teams at the former Northville Psychiatric Hospital property in a multi-jurisdictional, multi-disciplinary training event.

The purpose of the exercise is to evaluate the ability to respond to a major terrorist event involving multiple active shooters, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) or bombs and hazmat situations involving chemical weapons, according to a a press release from the Northville Township Police Department. 

“Northville Township supports this training exercise both as a means to test response capabilities and promote regional cooperation," said Northville Township Director of Public Safety John Werth. "The site provides a good test for the capabilities of many of the regions special response units. The Police and Fire Departments of Northville Township are happy to contribute to the development of the capabilities of teams that we hope are never needed.”

In addition to the Northville Township Police and Fire Departments, the 13 specialty teams represent more than 50 local agencies deploying more than 300 personnel.

Participating groups include the following:

• Detroit Bomb Squad
• Macomb County SWAT
• Macomb County Hazmat
• Washtenaw County Hazmat
• Dearborn Bomb Squad
• Oakland County SWAT
• Oakland County Hazmat (2)
• St. Clair County Hazmat
• Metro Airport Bomb Squad
• Western Wayne SWAT
• Wayne County Hazmat (2)

The training site provides for realistic, full-scale scenarios to be exercised, according to the press release. The exercise is partially funded through Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) Homeland Security Grants and will give an accurate assessment of the teams capabilities that have been supported by grant funding for the past several years.

"As a key region of our nation's homeland security infrastructure, we have made a very strong commitment towards both planning for major crisis situations and conducting exercises that evaluate our response capabilities and overall preparedness," said Marc Breckenridge, chairperson of the Southeast Michigan Urban Area Security Initiative.

"As we continue to train personnel, develop better response systems and add specialized equipment, exercises like this are essential to make sure that everything we do advances our ability to deploy highly effective specialized response teams anywhere they're needed in Southeast Michigan," Breckenridge said.

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