union station emergency drill

Union Station in Toronto looked like a horror movie this past weekend

If you happened to pass by Union Station in the middle of the night this past Saturday, you probably saw some seriously alarming and disturbing sights. 

Luckily, none of it was real. 

Metrolinx and Toronto Paramedic Services conducted their largest joint emergency exercise at Union Station in the early hours of November 3.

It involved 150 actors, professional make-up artists, and staged smoke at platform level.

The simulation imitated a mass casualty situation at one of Canada's largest transit hubs, and it began with someone acting as a gunman shooting at passengers exiting a GO train.

Volunteers were covered in fake gunshot wounds, as emergency professionals tended to their injuries and treated the situation as real and urgent. 

The simulation as a whole imitated a terrorist attack with 30 shooting victims.

It also included a fake fire at track level, and fire trucks surrounded the outside of Union to address it.

The simulation included about 200 people in all, including more than 50 volunteers from four different St. John Ambulance branches.

"Safety is critical to everything we do at Metrolinx, and it is important to regularly test our emergency preparedness to ensure our staff and first-responders are ready in the event of any type of critical incident at Union Station," said George Bell, Metrolinx VP of Safety and Security, in a statement.

The emergency exercise was about as terrifying and realistic as a simulation could be. And though it may have looked horrifying from an outsider's perspective, it definitely showed how dedicated and committed Toronto's emergency professionals truly are to keeping the city's residents safe.

Lead photo by

DR


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