Explosions rocked schools in five Sunland counties Saturday, injuring an unknown number of students and teachers.

Fortunately, it wasn't for real.

The make-believe rash of attacks at area schools was part of a five-county Homeland Security exercise at the Southeast Community College-Beatrice Campus Kennedy Center, involving about 170 emergency management, law enforcement, governmental and school officials from Gage, Jefferson, Saline, Thayer and Fillmore counties.

“Things went really well and we were able to see a lot of positive things we can build upon,” Gage County Emergency Management Director Mark Meints said.

Meints said Saturday's event was the first regional training exercise of this type to ever take place in Nebraska. Nebraska Lt. Gov. Rick Sheehy had been expected to attend, but Meints said presumably weather conditions kept him in Lincoln on Saturday.

For Saturday's exercise, personnel manned a bank of telephones and computers in one of the Kennedy Center rooms. From this simulation center, messages were sent out and received from each of the five county “emergency operations centers,” also housed inside Kennedy Center classrooms.

Each county had its own scenario to deal with, but all shared a common theme: a threat by a fictitious domestic terrorist organization called “Parents Against Public Schools” who vowed to take action against area schools unless their aims were met.

A video showed someone clad in camouflage gear whose face was nearly covered with a ski mask representing the fictional Parents Against Public Schools, who rambled about ending big business' hold on the state and vowed to let everyone know what the group could do the next day.

Soon, each EOC started receiving calls reporting an explosion at the Dorchester school, followed soon by reports of explosions and possible injuries at Southern High School in Wymore and schools in Wilber and Fairbury.

Based on supplies and personnel available, each EOC was then expected to come up with actions to deal with the situation.

The scenario was developed by the exercise planning team, consisting of Meints, Jefferson County Emergency Management Director John McKee, Saline County Emergency Management Director B.J. Fictum, Beatrice Fire and Rescue Chief Brian Daake, Gage County Sheriff's Deputy Bruce Slaven, Eric Voss with the Fairbury Fire Department, Brad Eisenhauer with Plymouth Fire and Rescue and other officials from Thayer and Fillmore counties, Public Health Solutions, Dorchester Fire Department and Nebraska Emergency Management Agency.

In a wrap-up session following the exercise, those in the Gage County-Wymore EOC said they thought communication between different agencies went well, while more radios and telephones could come in handy.

Gage County Supervisor Allen Grell, one of those working the EOC, said he also thought schools should submit a list of chemicals stored in its classroom laboratories to the local fire department.

Meints also said counties documented their actions well, which he said was important in potentially receiving federal funds following a disaster.

He also indicated a team would study the actions each EOC took during the drill and then evaluate and use them for future training sessions.

“This is meant as a learning exercise,” he said.