The Southeast Regional Domestic Security Task Force and Urban Area Security Initiative will be hosting Operation Heat Shield III, a regional complex coordinated terrorist attack training, uniting law enforcement and fire rescue agencies in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.

Complex coordinated terrorist attacks involve a violent assault or a series of assaults that employ one or more types of weapons to cause mass casualty events across multiple sites, causing a strain on the emergency response within a geographical area.

On May 15, Operation Heat Shield III will offer first responders in our region a series of unique and realistic drills designed around real-world scenarios to test their unified command capabilities. The focus is advancing community and regional partnerships by collaborating across jurisdictional boundaries and multi-disciplinary entities.

The full-scale exercise will begin with simultaneous kick-off scenarios at Port Miami, Port Everglades and Port of Palm Beach. Teams, made up of members from the Broward Sheriff’s Office, the Coral Springs, Davie, Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Pembroke Pines and Sunrise police departments, Broward Sheriff Fire Rescue and Davie and Pembroke Pines fire rescues, will be led through a series of unique scenarios at 19 venues throughout the region to test specific capabilities.

The initiative began in August 2018 with a regional capability assessment, followed by a series of train-the-trainer courses. In March 2019, tabletop exercises designed to identify gaps in regional plans were conducted at emergency operations centers in all three counties. The partnership and participation in Operation Heat Shield III ensures that we are all better prepared to mitigate, respond to and recover from such an event.

This full-scale exercise will take place between 6 p.m. on Wednesday, May 15 and 6 a.m. on Thursday, May 16. Residents should not be alarmed by the increased presence of law enforcement personnel and equipment in the region during the exercise.

Source: BSO