Hospitals and agencies practice for potential terrorist attacks

Thursday’s annual community-wide disaster preparedness drill was built on a nightmare scenario, and participants were starting to realize the gravity of the situation.

By 9 a.m., Dr. Christopher Hunter had received several emergency alerts: a car had hit more than 100 people downtown, and in another incident, a dangerous chemical was released.

“Now I’m getting a text message that there’s a shooting at Crane’s Roost Park,” said Hunter, assistant program director for the emergency medicine residency program at Orlando Regional Medical Center, which houses Central Florida’s only Level 1 trauma center.

The three coordinated terrorist attacks were on top of an unrelated accident that involved several fatalities and injuries.

He hadn’t found out about that yet.

“Basically the goal of these drills is to really stress our system. We have a really well-organized emergency response system in Central Florida, and the whole goal is to overwhelm those resources — and it takes a lot to overwhelm those resources,” said Hunter, who’s also the associate program director of Orange County EMS.

Fourteen hospitals — including Florida Hospital, Orlando Health, Nemours Children’s Hospital and HCA Healthcare — collaborated on Thursday’s drill, along with Lake, Orange and Seminole counties; the City of Orlando; the Central Florida Disaster Medical Coalition; Orange County Public Schools; the FBI; the Florida Department of Law Enforcement; and the Orange County Medical Examiner’s Office.

This year, for the first time, they were faced with four mass-casualty events instead of one.

“We looked at all the real situations that have been occurring both locally and nationally and throughout the world, and based on what we’ve been watching, we put the scenario together,” said Eric Alberts, Orlando Health’s emergency preparedness manager — who wrote and orchestrated Thursday’s disastrous scenario, dubbed “Operation Rolling Thunder.”

“We vetted it through the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security and other folks, and it’s very realistic,” he said.

Each entity conducts several disaster preparedness drills each year, but this annual exercise brings everyone together and gives them a chance to coordinate their plans and communications.

Florida Hospital incorporated K-9 officers — a recent addition to its two-legged security force.

Nearly 1,500 employees from Florida Hospital’s Orange County campuses took part.

Participants also incorpo-