When disaster strikes a community emergency officials and other local agencies have to be ready to work together and respond.
That's why over 25 agencies in Central Nebraska are taking part in special training to help keep their skills sharp.
Grand Island is one of only five communities nationwide selected to take part in specialized emergency operations and management training.
"Which takes a look at the relationships that exists between an emergency operations center of a given community and an incoming emergency management incident team," said FEMA Training Specialist Paul Ganem.
Over the next three days, they'll be doing classroom training and taking part in a two day functional exercise.
The goal is to help emergency responders improve their skills and communication.
"That way if we ever have to work on a real large incident it isn't the first time we've sat together across the table and worked on some sort of project like this," said Emergency Management Director Jon Rosenlund.
Rosenlund says in Nebraska some of the largest hazards are weather related, like blizzards or ice storms.
In the summer tornado's, lightning, or hail.
"So all of these incidents can create public need and cooperation between law enforcement fire, and the various agencies that we may have here in the county," said Rosenlund.
Those agencies like schools and public works may not normally work together, but they are now.
Experts say this type of training is important to establish expectations between groups that have different policies and ways of communication.
"We can't stop what happens, but what we can do is be better prepared with better planning on how to get our community up and running and get past whatever the bad thing was," said Ganem.
The community based training is only brought to five areas per year, at no cost.
In order to bring the course to Grand Island city officials submitted an application with the endorsement of the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency.
