Prattville hosts statewide disaster response drill
The City of Prattville is hosting the Alabama Mutual Aid System’s 2025 full-scale disaster response drill at Cooters Pond Park.
This large-scale training event is bringing together more than 175 mutual aid team members for a two-day event that ends today.
The exercises featured land and water-based search tactics, along with the use of aviation, drones, and K9 resources to simulate response efforts in a disaster environment.
Today’s exercise simulated victim searches in a 20-mile area from Montgomery to Autauga County with approximately 10 watercraft and 50 searchers on the river using drones. ALEA aviation was also used.
“When we use the system, it means that our state and surrounding states have been affected horrifically, so we do not want to deploy, but if we do, we want to make sure that we are professional and we provide the service that we are expected to,” Assistant Prattville Fire Chief Ricky Roberts said.
“We need to do the training because it takes skill to do what we do, but it’s good training for us, it’s good training for them. It shows different agencies in the state what we are capable of and it’s a resource that they can use if they are in a bad situation and when somebody gets injured, you know, minutes count sometimes, and getting them out in the aircraft is a lot of times the fastest way to get them to medical care,” Ronnie Johnston, a senior pilot for ALEA, said.
This drill is by far the largest drill the state has ever had and is the first one that is focused on flood water recovery.
Each participating rescue responders team will receive an official grade in the next 30 days.
