This is only a drill – but it’s as serious as training can get.

At Metrolinx, safety is at the core of every decision.

The need to protect life and limb impacts every decision, every meeting and every corner of the Ontario transit agency. It’s a constant and critical message to send to employees, communities and customers.

That’s why Metrolinx is hosting – in partnership with Toronto Paramedic Services – a large scale emergency exercise at Union Station. In fact, it’s the largest joint emergency exercise to ever take place at the busiest transit hub in the country.

The exercise will begin late evening on Saturday (November 2) and end in the early morning on Sunday (November 3).

“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 vice president of safety and security.

This exercise is not the first Metrolinx has conducted with emergency services partners throughout the region. In September 2018 and April 2017, Metrolinx conducted emergency simulations to test and assess responses to train derailments. All of the key learnings from previous exercises have helped improve emergency responsiveness in worst-case scenarios.

The emergency exercise is also being coordinated with partners at the City of Toronto, Toronto Police Services and Toronto Fire Services.  Although the late-night timing avoids any disruption to transit service, it will include some temporary road and sidewalk closures around Union Station.

This simulation, which has taken months for the partners to plan and organize, will involve 150 actors, professional make-up artists, and staged smoke at platform level.

During the simulation at Union Station, the public may see volunteers pretending to be seriously injured, many emergency vehicles in the area and first responders acting out the response protocol. It is not an actual emergency and therefore, it is important and the public should avoid calling 911 to ask questions.

It will be a long night for everyone involved in the exercise, but that’s the kind of hard work that shows when it comes to safety.