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GREENSBORO — With the sun blazing and temperatures soaring toward 90 degrees, county emergency officials spent Wednesday dealing with a massive ice storm.

A widespread power outage forced High Point Regional Hospital to resort to a backup generator. It failed, too.

Residents were evacuated from nursing homes without power. Downed power lines, trees and car crashes were widespread.

West Wendover Avenue was shut down in both directions because ice made it impassable.

Or at least, that’s what the computers in emergency command centers said.

It was all part of a county-wide training exercise to test emergency officials’ preparedness to a mass emergency scenario.

The response was being evaluated by officials with Envirosafe, an emergency consulting firm.

Officials with Guilford County, Greensboro and High Point set up command centers, fielded simulated 911 calls and worked together on the appropriate responses as they would if 3 to 4 inches of ice blanketed the area.

“It’s a behind-the-scenes look at everything we have during a large-scale event,” said David Douglas, assistant chief with the Greensboro Fire Department.

“It assures us a coordinated response that addresses the needs of the citizens and allows us to mitigate those problems that are real emergencies immediately.”

The daylong scenario included everything short of putting vehicles on the road to respond to calls.

Inside the Greensboro emergency command center on North Church Street, a 911 call would come in and be sent to the appropriate agency.

Fire and police personnel put calls in priority, and other city departments had representatives available to respond to situations as needed.

Parks and recreation officials dispatched workers to remove downed trees. Public relations officials fielded mock calls from the media.

City engineers stood ready to evaluate a building damaged by fire to decide whether it was inhabitable or needed to be condemned.

Curveballs were thrown all day, such as unexpected equipment failures and communications problems. Similar coordination was going on at command centers for the county and in High Point.

“I see a lot of positives and everyone is working together,” said John Glenn, an evaluator with Envirosafe. “In a real-life scenario, (Guilford County, Greensboro and High Point) will have to mesh together.”

Department leaders will take the consultants’ review to see what areas went well and which need improvement.

“A lot of people don’t understand the mechanisms that are in place to respond (to a disaster)” Douglas said.

“We have a mechanism in place to process the information, prioritize it and respond to it, and that’s essentially what this is.”

“If we get a hurricane next week, this same process is going to take place.”

Contact Ryan Seals at 373-7077 or ryan.seals@news-record.com