[MSN] PHILADELPHIA Police barricaded streets around the Philadelphia Museum of Art Monday evening to conduct an emergency preparedness drill.

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Aug 6, 2007 11:58 pm US/Eastern

Disaster Drill Conducted Near Art Museum Area
 
Jamie Smith
Reporting

(CBS 3) PHILADELPHIA Police barricaded streets around the Philadelphia
Museum of Art Monday evening to conduct an emergency preparedness drill.

The drill was dubbed "Operation Parkway Safe" and tested the response of the
Fire Department and emergency responders.

"We opened up with our members responding to 30th Street Station, it was two
explosions at 30th Street Station," Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers said.

Next were two "explosions" at Eakins Oval designed to simulate a bombing
amongst a mass gathering.

"We had responding units come in, we were overwhelmed," Ayers explained.

During the drill, the Fire Department worked with ambulance companies to
save hundreds of, quote, "victims" of a simulated disaster on the Benjamin
Franklin Parkway.

Big events are regularly held on the parkway. One of the largest was the
Live 8 concert in July 2005, which drew close to one million people.

Emergency management officials running the drill said their focus was not
response time, but the effectiveness of a new triage process.

"Every emergency, you learn lessons and you take corrective actions, so I
would not want to make this a pass/fail kind of test, we practice, we learn
and we improve," incident commander Maryann Marricolo explained.

The full assessment of the drill is expected to take at least several days.

Septa Bus Routes 38 and 43 were detoured as a result of the exercise.

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