CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The U.S. Coast Guard teamed up with area emergency response teams to conduct the 2023 Maritime Emergency Response Exercise.
Approximately 50,000 federal, state and local organizations came together on Friday to simulate a full-scale emergency right in Corpus Christi Bay. Coast Guard Deputy Sector Cmdr. Sector Jason Gunning said that a simulation as big as this one is 3 years in the making.
"So, we put the plan together and they sort of sit on the shelves, so to speak, but it's important to discuss those plans and actually put them into practice every so often," he said.
Gunning highlighted that an exercise of this magnitude requires a massive team effort.
"Bringing in all of our authorities, all of our capabilities and trying to unify that into one unified command is what it is. A unified command so that we're able to make the waterways as safe as possible for everyone," he said.
Port of Corpus Christi Chief Operating Officer Clark Robertson said that this collaborative exercise is a great way to assess how prepared our local forces are to face a mass rescue event.
"It's cooperation and communication. All rescue kind of operations that would take place, we'll get a good response. What we're not so sure of all the time is whether we'll get good cooperation and communication between those parties so they can be as effective as they can be if something tragic were to happen," he said.
Friday's exercise simulated a passenger vessel colliding with a barge and the subsequent recovery effort for people who may have fallen in the water.
"We have purposely chosen not to give the participants, who we call players in this exercise, all of the details. So they don't know necessarily how this is going to unfold, or exactly what their role is going to be. So I think the perfect thing with us is we all get to see how things unfold and they'll get a good understanding of the items that we all need to work on," he said.
The Port of Corpus Christi and the U.S. Coast Guard's local sector are in constant collaboration year-round. Gunning said the port has always been a proactive player when it comes to the safety of our waters. Robertson said that the attention to time and detail is what made the simulation successful.
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