Excerpts from the ChicagoTribune.com:
The cities of Naperville and Aurora will share a $1.4 million federal grant to train police, firefighters, and other emergency personnel in how to deal with a terrorist attack.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency funding, to be disbursed over a three-year period, will allow emergency teams to coordinate training, planning, and exercises to prepare for an attack similar to those that have occurred in Paris, Boston, and elsewhere. The grant is one of 30 issued nationally by FEMA.
Naperville firefighters and police already provide automatic mutual aid to nearby communities in times of crisis.
The grant money will help emergency service providers to work with our partners and provide training for employees of Edward Hospital in Naperville, local colleges and universities, and the area’s two public school systems, among others. School administrators, faculty, and staff members can be taught what they can do to safeguard students during a crisis until police and firefighters can get to the scene.
FEMA officials in February announced their Prepare Communities for Complex Coordinated Terrorist Attacks grant program, with municipalities and agencies across the country competing for the funding.
Among the plan’s goals were adoption of region-wide, common response tactics for emergency personnel; reviewing all valid assessments and critical infrastructure; ensuring that continuity of operations plans exist at all levels, and with all responding agencies; and sharing all approved processes findings and corrective actions with local, regional, state and national partners.
The grant awarded to Naperville and Aurora was the largest given to any municipality or agency in Illinois, and the 12th largest nationally.
