A situation that looked serious to the uninformed was a necessary drill for first responders preparing for emergency events at two separate locations in San Juan County.

Devin Neely, spokesperson of the SJC Office of Emergency Management told KOB that a heavy presence of first responders in Farmington and Bloomfield last week were for important drills to practice what must be done in what could be a very chaotic emergency situation.

“We are exercising the first responders in San Juan County with two separate incidents that are happening on opposite sides of the county, we are working with a private partner to use their facilities and exercise their people and their processes as well,” Neely told KOB.

Nearly every level of law enforcement and medical aid was involved in these drills. On-lookers may have noticed the fleet of police cars with flashing lights, the SWAT team, fire department vehicles and EMS trucks. But also important is establishing the chain of command, evacuation produces and communication protocols.

Every detail is coordinated through the Office of Emergency Management, whose duty is to protect life, property and the environment by developing, coordinating and managing programs that prevent, prepare for, respond to, recover from and mitigate natural and man-made disasters and emergencies.

“This is an opportunity to test the plans,” Neely said. “You can plan, and you can practice all you want but until you get a real opportunity to try it out, you don’t exactly know how things are going to work."

These drills are held once a year to prepare for such things as active shooters, bomb threats, terrorist threats and poisonous exposures.

“These are things that could happen here,” Neely said. “They haven’t fortunately, and so in a low-pressure environment we get to practice the skills that we would use to mitigate any incident of this nature."