El Paso County Emergency Management prepares for ‘Deep Freeze 16’

El Paso County Emergency Management is holding an exercise drill to prepare for a potential blizzard. It’s called “Deep Freeze ’16,” and meant to better prepare the county.

Rick White, emergency planner for El paso County has been planning a blizzard drill for months.

“The scenario is that we have a large winter blizzard coming into the northwest to southeast,” said White.

White has pinpointed a lengthy list of problems a blizzard could cause.

“This chart right here is the life size version of the master scenario event list,” said White.

White created a list of 189 real-life scenarios ranging from crashes with injuries to stranded motorists.

The plan is to conduct every scenario on with the help of 30 different agencies including Colorado National Guard, Black Forest Fire Rescue, St. Francis Medical Center, the Salvation Army and more.

“Their jobs will basically be to rescue stranded motorists and get them to a shelter,” said White.

Hundreds of volunteers will also be on hand to act as stranded motorists.

Lonnie Inzer, deputy chief for El Paso County emergency management says the drill is meant to better prepare crews in case a blizzard were to happen similar to the one in 1997.

“We’re looking back at what happened in 1997 with the blizzard. At that time, the county shut down completely, it was so difficult for even the rescuers to respond,” said Inzer.

Inzer says he doesn’t want that to happen again, but with every snowfall comes a chance to improve.

“The idea behind these exercise is not to see how we do, but to see how we might improve,” said White.

The drill starts Saturday morning at 6 and lasts till 9 at night.