UPDATE (11:16 a.m. Wednesday, April 17)

The U.S. Department of Defense will be staging regional urban training exercises two nights next week on the Tinley Park Mental Health Center grounds, village officials announced Tuesday. READ: Tinley Park Stays Vigilant in Wake of Boston Marathon Attack

The exercises, which will inculde local public safety agencies, will be run the nights of April 23 and 24 and will involve helicopter operations and breaching buildings using live explosives, said Mayor Ed Zabrocki at the end of the Tuesday, April 16, village board meeting. The drills will not be open to the public because of safety and security concerns for untrained spectators, a village press release stated Wednesday, April 17. Although coordination with the Defense Department began months ago, Tinley Park officials acknowledged the eerie timing of these drills, given the April 15 bomb attack at the Boston Marathon. That's made the importance of the village's aggressive public awareness campaign even greater, to insure citizens aren't alarmed by what's going on, said Pat Carr, director of Tinley Park's Emergency Management Agency.

PHOTOS: Drill Prepares Tinley Emergency Crews for Real Disaster "We just want to make sure that all the residents in the area are aware of what's going on, not to be alarmed, especially in light of recent events," he said.

Along with press releases about the exercises, there will be City Watch alerts sent to residents, and officials will be contacting other communities, schools and other local institutions and organizations that could be affected by these drills, Carr said.

In the past, the grounds of the Tinley Park Mental Health Center, which was closed by the state last summer, have been used by various agencies as a staging area to run emergency and crisis simulations. That made it a good fit for the Defense Department's plans, and the state, which still has jurisdiction over the center grounds, gave the OK earlier this year.

READ: Get a Glimpse Inside Tinley's Emergency Management 'Bunker' "What's unique about this one is that it goes on for multiple days, and it's probably the biggest one we've had," Zabrocki said. "That's part of the reason why we're being so aggressive, especially with what occurred Monday in Boston."