Newark First Responders and Many Others Prepare for the Worst

In the midst of a severe hurricane, a group of terrorists sees an opportunity, ramming a truck loaded with explosives into a water-treatment plant while first responders are already stretched to the limit dealing with the storm.

This is the nightmare scenario firefighters, police officers and other personnel from a disparate group of agencies rehearsed Saturday at the Newark Fire Department’s training academy on Orange Street.

The exercise, the Multi-Agency FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) Workshop on Terrorism, was organized primarily by the Newark Fire Department with assistance from city police, who have formed a joint task force. Among the agencies taking part in drills Saturday were the fire departments from Jersey City, Elizabeth, Paterson and Yonkers, New York, as well as police from Jersey City, NJ Transit and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The New Jersey Army National Guard, FEMA and the FBI also took part in the training, which was a year in the making, said John Centanni, chief of the Newark Fire Department.

“As soon as this ends, we start working on next year’s,” said Centanni.

At fire academy headquarters, Firefighter Frank Bellina and other NFD personnel built a mockup of a treatment plant with a vehicle slammed through an exterior wall. Stations were set up where first responders handled various aspects of the emergency, which included using jackhammers to punch through an interior wall in order to get to injured plant workers. Law enforcement officers practiced securing the scene. Agents from the FBI’s hazmat unit examined the terrorist’s truck, rehearsing ways to test for the presence of radiation, explosives and other hazards. Mannequins served as “victims” and “terrorists.”

Saturday’s exercise was not just a training opportunity for individual agencies, but also a chance to learn how to synchronize efforts among police, firefighters, federal agencies and the military during a disaster. One of the “lessons learned” from a real-life tragedy, the Sept. 11 attacks, is the importance of making sure everyone at a scene is working together, which involves details like ensuring one agency can communicate via radio with another and setting up a joint command to oversee everyone’s work.

Bellina said that in many cities, the police and fire departments don’t cooperate to the extent they do in Newark, where a joint team is in place to handle city-wide emergencies like last year’s Hurricane Sandy.

“It’s something that’s been done over the last several years,” said NFD Battalion Chief Mike Kormash. “The Newark Police Department and the Newark Fire Department used to be separate agencies. Now we’re working together.”


During Saturday’s workshop, that cooperative ethos was extended to include personnel at every level of government. Firefighter Joe Delikat of the NFD spent part of the afternoon showing personnel from the National Guard the department’s TALON robot, a small device that is sent in first to assess the situation inside a structure. Delikat and the National Guard soldiers wanted to learn how the hardy little machine  -- which can open doors, climb stairs and pull loads as heavy as 250 lbs. -- could share information from its camera and detectors in real time with agencies other than the NFD.

“Ten years ago you would never have seen this level of cooperation,” said Battalion Chief Brian McDermott of the Paterson Fire Department. “This is great.”