Mock Disaster on Detroit River Rests Response Times

Aug. 24--Made up to look like a disaster victim, with a shard of glass sticking out of the bloody wound in his forehead, Eric Tuchelske was told to play dead after a blast rocked the Detroit Princess riverboat.

Tuchelske lay on the shore as passing stretchers and busy emergency personnel carrying other mock victims clipped him.

"One of the EMS people said, 'Hey, you're hitting him in the head!' " said Tuchelske, 48, of Dearborn Heights, who was volunteering to help a friend who works with the American Red Cross. "So, for about an hour or so, I laid on the dock. It was a nice little nap -- kind of."

The mock disaster was the result of three years of planning and was designed to test emergency response times during a large-scale emergency. In all, about 500 people from more than 65 U.S. and Canadian federal, state and local emergency response agencies took part in "Detroit River Readiness 2011," stretching from Trenton to downtown Detroit, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

After a blast from the riverboat just after 9 a.m. echoed between the Renaissance Center and the Windsor shore, dozens of Detroit firefighters, Windsor police, U.S. Coast Guard officers and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents boarded tugs, speedboats and ice cutters. Speeding off into the sparkling blue water, they then rescued 75 people -- actually floating orange Coast Guard suits -- from the water.

U.S. Coast Guard Operations Specialist James Badgett juggled requests and commands from two cell phones and six handheld radios to help the event unfold smoothly, as he would do if it were the real thing.

"We go through the growing pains of practice so that way, when we actually need it for a large-scale exercise, we're ready to go," he said.

Inspector George Lepine of Transport Canada, the federal agency responsible for marine, aviation and railway security in Canada, was pleased as he stood on the Detroit side of the river.

"I think our response process in this area is excellent because we have so much resources," Lepine said. "Both on the Canadian side and the U.S. side, there's a large deployment of resources here on a daily basis, so we're covered very well."