Numerous Twin Ports public safety officials gather for training

Officials from all aspects of public safety gathered at the University of Minnesota Duluth on August 17.

The Duluth and Superior fire departments, the U.S. Coast Guard, and doctors and hospital staff were among those training for emergency situations. They trained with a hypothetical scenario of a terrorism threat affecting a cruise ship coming into the Twin Ports.

“What’s really good for us is we can take all the lessons learned from this specific incident, we can use it for a specific incident like that, but we can also model it to something else that happens locally here, or scaled up to county, state, or federal disaster,” Duluth Fire Chief Shawn Krizaj said.

Krizaj said the scalability of the training means the cruise ship scenario can then be applied to other things like a fishing charter boat or even a saltie or laker.