Hundreds of people are part of blizzard exercise

It’s a drill to get state and county emergency crews ready for one of the winter’s worst case scenarios.

Deep Freeze 2016 happened in El Paso County Saturday.

Dacia Pitts said the exercise is important for her since she has never been in a blizzard. She was one of the mock victims in the training.

“I love Colorado and I want to stay here my whole life, so if there is a blizzard I would like to know what to do,” she said.

The exercise happened throughout the county.

“What were trying to do is exercise our communication process and our response capabilities to people who are stranded during a blizzard,” El Paso County Director of Emergency Management Jim Reid said.

He said the training is to prepare for a blizzard similar to the one that hit El Paso County in 1997 .

“Unfortunately, we had loss of life in ’97, so our goal is to improve our processes and how we do that,” Reid said.

St. Francis Medical Center also participated in preparing for a future blizzard.

Chris Valentine, spokesperson for the medical center, said the hospital’s goal is to find out if it has the resources to handle 100 patients who are affected by the mock blizzard.

“The big thing we worry about in a blizzard situation is staffing. So if people are having trouble in the community, our staff is going to have trouble getting into the hospital,” he said.

More than 400 people participated in the exercise.