Evacuation drill in Greenwood Lake area Tuesday evening

Once a year the Gunflint Trail Fire Department conducts an evacuation training drill, and on the evening of Tuesday, May 25, there will be a mock evacuation in the Greenwood Lake area. Mike Prom is a Gunflint Trail volunteer firefighter:

 

“At 6:30 the fire department will be meeting at Hall 1, which is our hall near Poplar Lake. And we go through about a half hour briefing, a little bit of teaching, and then a little bit of planning on who’s going to take what. And then there’ll be probably six or eight teams of two, that will go out into the Greenwood Lake area. They’ll split the fire numbers up amongst themselves and actually, physically go door to door – see if anybody’s home – if somebody’s home they’ll talk to them and explain what we’re doing. The idea, there’s a couple objectives, the first is to familiarize ourselves with different parts of our fire district, so that all the firefighters get to drive down the roads, and know what kind of buildings, and how wide the roads are, and where the turnarounds are and so on. So that’s part of it. And then secondly, is to actually practice, if we would need to evacuate, which we’ve done several times in the last ten years, and it’s come in handy. You know, if we need to evacuate, everybody on the ground knows what they’re supposed to be doing. And then it also gives us a good idea of how much time it takes to do certain areas with a certain amount of people or resources, so that if the Sheriff does say ‘we need to have this evacuated, how long will it take you?’ - we have a pretty good idea.”

 

Residents in the Greenwood Lake area can expect a knock on their doors the evening of Tuesday, May 25, along with the sight of emergency vehicles and personnel in the area. For more information about the Gunflint Trail Volunteer Fire Department and evacuations on the Gunflint Trail, go to gunflint911.org.