Emergency teams surrounded the Wal-Mart Home Office Sunday afternoon, but don't worry, it's all part of an exercise put on by the Benton County Department of Emergency Management. The scenario for the emergency drill involved a violent event leading to mass casualties, designed to really test the skills of our local responders. The exercise had all the elements of what appeared to be a real emergency...with the swat team, hostages and yes, even fake members of the media on hand. Officers rushed hostages out of the home office and to waiting ambulances... Many of the hostages even had wounds marked with fake blood. Wal-Mart teamed up with emergency responders in an effort to test it's own company security procedures. The Benton County Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security worked for more than five months to put the exercise together. Emergency teams hope to walk away having learned some valuable lessons. "Hopefully we'll learn a lot of lessons here that heaven forbid we ever have the real thing, we can adequately respond," Bentonville Police Chief James Allen says. Local responders run drills like this one often but Chief Allen says this is the first time emergency services have put together a drill this big...involving both Benton and Washington Counties, Bentonville, Rogers, Siloam Springs, Springdale and Fayetteville.
