This 'City' Trains First Responders For Bombs, Tornadoes And Even Ebola

By Lauren Silverman

Published November 19, 2014 at 1:14 PM CST

In College Station, there’s a city that’s been hit by disasters. Earthquakes, hurricanes, even bombs. It’s called Disaster City. This 72-acre site is helping people, and robots, train for the next major disaster.

Disaster City is growing.

Chief David Martin, who directs rescue training at the site, points to new roads that disappear into the tall oaks.

Since it was built by the Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service in 1998, 90 thousand emergency responders from across the world have come here to climb over mangled steel and derailed trains.

Read the rest of this story on our Breakthroughs blog.

Lauren Silverman

Lauren Silverman is the Health, Science & Technology reporter/blogger at KERA News. She is also the primary backup host for KERA’s Think and the statewide newsmagazine Texas Standard. In 2016, Lauren was recognized as Texas Health Journalist of the Year by the Texas Medical Association. She was part of the Peabody Award-winning team that covered Ebola for NPR in 2014. She also hosted "Surviving Ebola," a special that won Best Long Documentary honors from the Public Radio News Directors Inc. (PRNDI). And she's won a number of regional awards, including an honorable mention for Edward R. Murrow award (for her project “The Broken Hip”), as well as the Texas Veterans Commission’s Excellence in Media Awards in the radio category.

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