Large-scale urban disaster exercises taking place in downtown St. Louis this week

ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - A large-scale training exercise will take over parts of downtown St. Louis near Busch Stadium.

The exercises, conducted by East-West Gateway and in partnership with U.S. National Guard Task Force 46 (Michigan) Guard, , include search, rescue, recovery and decontamination at Busch Stadium, helicopter medical transport, a military river crossing from St. Charles to Grafton and a train derailment/fuel leak.

Samantha Lewis, Executive Director of STARRS (St Louis Area Regional Response System), says Task Force 46 does a large-scale training exercise once a year in different parts of the country like Nashville. This year will mark the first time Task Force 46 has done a large-scale training exercise in St. Louis.

"Whenever we put this together, we have a lot of people on our planning team to make sure we are exercising things to help our first responders and they're getting a real scenario of what it would be like to this," said Lewis on Total Information A.M. "So they do have some idea on the different scenarios that we are going to be testing and there different skills and there tactical operations."

The exercises take place from June 15-17 and some of the scenarios includes an 8.4 magnitude earthquake along the New Madrid Seismic Fault, simulating a focused response to structural damage, civilian casualties, and chemical contamination in the vicinity of Busch Stadium during a baseball game.

The exercises will be visible in downtown St. Louis, but the public is asked not to visit the drill area. Residents should avoid the 8th Street side of Busch Stadium, as 8th Street at Clark Street will be closed to traffic during daylight hours.

The exercises are being coordinated with STARRS, the St. Louis Area Regional Response System, which is housed within East-West Gateway Council of Governments.