A giant Hercules plane landed at Jack Garland Airport Friday morning stock full of supplies to deal with an emergency.
It's the start of a Canadian Armed Forces emergency response exercise with local government and partner agencies in the Mattawa and North Bay area this weekend.
"It is part of what we are trying to do to increase our individual and collective readiness," said Brigadier General Josh Major, Commander of 4th Division and Joint Task Force who was born in North Bay.
The event started at the airport and will move to Mattawa on the weekend where a Chinook Helicopter will fly in supplies to a mock command centre located at the Mike Rodden Arena in Mattawa.
"This is about our readiness, being able to respond when the call comes, and this is part of it," stated Major, about the exercise which includes a flood scenario.
"Part of it is getting the supplies to our troops and the supplies are coming out of the Hercules right now and originated in CFB Kingston and moved to CFB Trenton and flown out up here."
See related: Major military exercise coming to Mattawa and North Bay
While this is a mock exercise, military officials admit there will be twists to the plot that will force the troops to think fast.
They are called injects.
"We have designated scenarios that we inject into the team so that we can observe how the team reacts to them and be creative at proposing those solutions. There are a number of different ways that we can solve various problems and we hope they land on the most appropriate but as long as they achieve the mission then we will be happy with that," said Lt. Colonel Jason Fox, Commanding Officer 33 Combat Engineer Regiment
It has been nearly a decade since they have held an exercise of this scale in the north.
The military also wants the public to know about the mock exercise in the Mattawa area.
"We want to express our intentions and they are pretty clear in terms of the way we want to approach these types of exercises. We need to ensure we are building collective readiness with our partners in the local governments to ensure we have those communication channels and the types of procedures that go with them," said Lt.(Navy) Andrew J. McLaughlin, Brigade Public Affairs Officer.
"We do simulated emergencies but when there is a real emergency those same types of mechanisms have to work and they work a lot better when you have practiced them."
