First responders, emergency management and public health officials participate in an enhanced sport and special even incident management training ahead of the 2025 NFL Draft in Green Bay. PC: Fox 11 Online
GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Green Bay is on the clock for the 2025 NFL Draft. First responders, emergency management and public health officials are all participating in a scenario-based training this week as they prepare for the draft next April.
“Were we prepared for this or was this something that we were caught off guard?” That’s the question being asked during a training this week as local first responders, emergency management and public health officials participate in an Enhanced Sports and Special Events Incident Management Course.
TEEX, which is a federally funded program out of Texas A&M University, is putting on the specialized training at the request of Green Bay police, ahead of the NFL Draft.
“The focus here is on, who do you partner with, who are your strategic partners that you bring into when you’re planning a large scale event such as the draft and then how do you plan for those events, the process you go through,” said Dr. James Burghard.
The training which started with instructional work is ending with table top exercises. Students like Green Bay’s Police Chief and Fire Chief, along with other local public safety entities, are working through how they manage an event and run it, along with how they’d react should an issue arise during the event.
According to Burghard, “We, in the first responder community, talk about everything is about relationships and partnerships, building these way ahead of time helps us understand how we work together, our strengths and weaknesses and where we can build each other up and how we can help each other be successful through events like the NFL Draft.”
Thursday’s tabletop exercise focused on a fictional concert venue, full of people, when several explosions went off.
Students either worked in incident command, emergency operations or the policy group, collaborating with each other as they would in the case of a real emergency.
“This training has been a little bit more intense in terms of really making you think about your individual role and how that fits in the larger picture to make an event like this a success. The scenario training is designed to make you think through all of those things that you’re going to have to do in reality, whether you’re ready for them or not and that’s how it is in the real world too,” added Chief Chris Davis with Green Bay police.
And by completing this training local officials say they feel more prepared to handle not only the draft, but all kinds of events in the region in the future.
This week’s TEEX training is the second one in a series brought to Green Bay ahead of the draft. A previous training focused on crowd management and crowd control.
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