A May 18 disaster exercise has been canceled on account of a real disaster.
City Manager Matt Zimmerman said Monday that the city and county were calling off the joint exercise so that people and resources could be sent as needed to Greensburg or to flooded areas in Lyon County.
Most of Greensburg was destroyed by a tornado Friday.
Zimmerman said that Fire Chief Jack Taylor had been invited to go to Greensburg as a relief coordinator. Two police officers and two sheriff’s deputies have already gone there to help with security and code services chief Martin Peres went out last weekend to help assess the damage.
The exercise has not been rescheduled.
Zimmerman said that one thing the exercise would have helped determine was whether the communications network needed any reinforcement.
“The biggest thing you tend to lose is communications,” he said. “That’s less of an issue with cell phones — unless the towers go down or they’re so overloaded that you can’t get through. In a case like that, do we need to look at satellite services? Do we need to expand what we have? The exercise scheduled for the 18th was going to help us reach an answer on that.”