As reported on Wednesday by the charity and support fund, the exercise participants had to not only organize the preparation of food packages and the cooking of hot meals but also respond to an unknown situation in advance – when an air hazard was announced, together with specialists from the Utena district municipality, they directed about half a thousand people to safe places and hid themselves.
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The exercises aimed to practically test how the “Food Bank” team would be able to operate during a real emergency situation when the municipality would need additional forces to supply residents with food in a very short time.
According to the exercise scenario, a situation was simulated where 2,000 people arrive in Utena from Latvia due to an emergency situation. The municipality requests help from the “Food Bank” – food packages need to be prepared for 800 arrivals, and hot meals for another 200 people.
The organization’s employees, arriving from different Lithuanian cities, were divided into teams and had to practically organize the entire aid chain: unload, count food products, prepare workplaces, assemble food packages, organize their distribution, manage the flow of people, public order, and information transfer.
Another part of the team took care of hot meal preparation in the canteen of Utena Dauniškis Gymnasium.
During the exercises, firefighters from the Fire and Rescue Service also worked on the site; they conducted practical training for the “Food Bank” employees: explaining what types of extinguishers are used in different situations, how to properly extinguish a fire, and allowed employees to try the extinguishers themselves.
According to the “Food Bank,” the distribution of prepared food packages for the exercises was supposed to start at 2 p.m. near the Utena Cultural Center, and residents of Utena city were invited to pick them up, so hundreds of people had already gathered on the site. It was precisely then that the simulated air hazard was announced.
This part of the scenario was not known in advance to the practicing “Food Bank” team; the employees had to react as they would in a real emergency situation: the food distribution process was stopped, and the organization’s team, together with Utena civil preparedness officers, began directing people to shelters and other safe places in the Utena Cultural Center.
About 500 people waiting for food packages at that time had to be escorted there, including many seniors, people with disabilities, and residents with limited mobility.
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Some people initially did not want to leave the waiting area and go to the shelters, so the exercise participants had to not only manage a large flow of people but also explain the situation, convince residents to follow instructions, and take care of those who needed additional help.
According to the organization’s calculations, about 600 people hid in total in two shelters set up in the Utena Cultural Center during the entire exercise time. After the air hazard ended and people left the safe places, the “Food Bank” team immediately returned to the previous task – distributing food packages.
According to Simonas Gurevičius, head of the “Food Bank,” one of the most important results of the exercises was the realistically measured time during which the organization’s team managed to control the unexpectedly changed situation and return to providing food aid.
“Adding up the time during which we helped direct about half a thousand people to shelters and other safe places, and the time during which we distributed food packages after they left, we fit into one hour. This is a very good result, showing that our employees can quickly reorient, focus, and act even when the situation changes completely unexpectedly,” S. Gurevičius is quoted as saying in the statement.
According to him, during an emergency situation, just having food is not enough. You need to know where it is, how quickly it can be delivered, where to prepare it, how to assemble hundreds of packages, organize hot meal preparation, and how to do all this safely when circumstances can change by the minute.
Utena district municipality emergency management and civil safety specialists, the municipality’s Social Affairs and Health Protection Department, Utena Cultural Center, Utena Dauniškis Gymnasium, “Utenos vandenys,” “Utenos komunalininkas,” the Fire and Rescue Service, and other partners contributed to the preparation and implementation of the “Food Bank” exercises.
The exercises are part of the “Food Bank’s” preparation to assist the state and municipalities in the event of an emergency.
