I am so tired. And I really shouldn’t be because first of all, I slept like a rock last night and got some extra hours than usual. Second of all, yes it was a big drill but I didn’t do much except handed out wristbands. It was the annual CART (Northeast Texas Child Abduction Response Team) drill and of course EastTex CERT was involved. I was quite excited that I was off this day so I could participate! Not only that, the weather was fabulous for a drill. Cloudy and not too warm yet. A little humid but we could take that.

Around 15 agencies was involved. K9, local law enforcement (both sheriff and pd), FBI, DPS including their Air 1, Texas Rangers and volunteers. It was over 60 people present. So this was a pretty big thing. And as it always is, almost a cluster f*ck. But that’s why drills like this is good. You get to realize what the weak links are, what needs to be improved. Today, the main thing that stuck out was communication. And with that it was both lack of communication during the event as well as law enforcement did not have the appropriate channels that is used to run this kind of operations on.

The scenario was that a kid was abducted in a park and a grey van had been seen in relation to the kid. The kid was later found deceased. The drill went well. I really didn’t do much. Well, honestly, the only thing I did was put on wristbands. When the event started I naturally was assigned part of the medical team and guess what… we did nada. We never even left the staging area. So yeah, it was a little bit boring. But it was over all a lot of fun! I am so glad I was able to go since I miss out of a lot of this opportunities due to work.