Rockville Centre hosts disaster management seminar

About 40 public service professionals attended a two-day course on disaster management in Rockville Centre Village Hall on July 19 and 20.

The course covered emergency response to a variety of natural, technological and civil hazards to which public service systems may be vulnerable.

Among the participants were members of the Rockville Centre Police Department, fire department, department of public works, electric department and building department, as well as the Rockville Centre school district and Molloy College.

Participants from other jurisdictions included the Nassau County police, the MTA police, NYPD Patrol Division, NYPD Counter Terrorism Division, the Amityville police, the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office, the Nassau County Parks Department and the Nassau County Office of Emergency Management.

The training course was prepared in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s national training program and the engineering extension service of the Texas A&M University system.

According to Lt. Christopher Romance of the Rockville Centre Police Department, the village invited the representatives from the various jurisdictions because they would be involved in any large-scale incident in the village.

During the two-day course, the participants learned about the various ways to plan for and respond to large-scale emergencies. “They learned how to respond using the national incident management system, which is in place for multiple agencies to work under the same terminologies,” said Romance. “Personnel would respond differently depending on how involved something is, like a natural disaster with a hurricane or flood, fires or explosions or a response to a terrorist attack.”

According to Romance, the course went well and all the different agencies that were represented received positive responses.