ATHOL – A number of area first responders and town officials will gather next Monday at Athol Town Hall for a hazmat tabletop drill overseen by the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA).

The drill is being facilitated by Athol Fire Chief Joseph Guarnera and its purpose is to see how well area agencies would respond in the event of a major emergency. Participating towns include Athol, Petersham, Phillipston, Barre, Ashburnham, Gardner, Royalston, Templeton, Winchendon and Hubbardston. The exercise is being done at no cost to the town.

“Most departments have an LEPC, Local Emergency Planning Committee,” Guarnera explained. “I started a Regional Emergency Planning Committee, or REPC, that involves quite a few surrounding towns. A lot of the towns around here are smaller ones – Athol tends to be one of the larger ones. If we do things regionally we can take advantage of other peoples’ assets and all work together as a team on something that might be too big to handle locally.”

Guarnera said he worked with MEMA to set up next week’s exercise.

“These exercises are usually hazmat-related,” he added. “They give you the ability to exercise your CEM Plan, your Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan.”

The CEM Plan he said, helps plan hazmat preparedness, mitigation, response, short-term recovery and long-term recovery.

“So, if an emergency like this would happen, it tells you who the players are and who does what,” said Guarnera. “It gets into roles, responsibilities, department operations, because when something bad happens, somebody has to be in command.”

The CEM Plan also provides details regarding the roles of the Department of Public Works, the Selectboard, the town manager, the Department of Public Health and the media.

These exercises usually revolve around a fictional hazardous materials emergency and no one will know the nature or the extent of the emergency until Monday morning.

“With the tabletop exercise, you say, ‘Okay, how would you handle this?’ DPW would have to do this. Police would have to do that,” said the chief. “What you try to do is kind of implement what’s in that CEM Plan to make sure each participant knows exactly what it is they need to do.”

Once the exercise has been run, participants will receive a debriefing and a critique of how they handled their responsibilities.

“The response is one thing,” Guarnera continued, “but actually recovering from it is another thing. But the whole thing is the protection of life and property; life over everything, property second, environment after that. What it all comes down to is identifying who does what.”

Guarnera added that three years ago he approached Town Manager Shaun Suhoski and asked him to encourage all of Athol’s department heads to take a class in interdepartmental management.

“That way they know what their roles are, who is in charge,” said Guarnera. “So, if I say, ‘This is what I need you to do,’ they understand why. All of the department heads took that class, which was incredible. Now they know where they fall within the command system, what authority they have, and what authority they might not have.”

Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com.