World Cup 2026: Atlanta’s emergency teams train for safety

The 2026 FIFA World Cup is quickly approaching, with a little over 40 days away until the first match in Atlanta, and the Atlanta Police Department (APD) and Atlanta Fire Rescue Department (AFRD) are preparing for every scenario, including mass casualty events, as hundreds of thousands of people flood the city to watch the world’s biggest sport. 

On Monday morning, APD and AFRD held a mass-casualty training event at Centennial Olympic Park, where the FIFA Fan Festival is taking place. They broke down the coordinated, multi-agency response led by the Atlanta-Fulton County Emergency Management Agency (AFCEMA) and the City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Emergency Preparedness (MOEP), and supported by local, federal, and state resources such as the Georgia Emergency Management Agency (GEMA) 

Actors playing shooting victims lay immobilized across the ground of Centennial Olympic Park, hands pressed to imaginary gun wounds, as a woman ran through the field shouting for her missing son. It was a full-scale exercise, but one that mimicked real-life incidents and active shooter responses during mass casualty events. One hundred members of APD, 50 members from the fire department, and Grady EMS participated in the exercise, with different groups charging through the park, to first stop the shooter and then provide rapid on-scene care for victims to save as many lives as possible. 

APD Assistant Chief Carven Tyus said the training is conducted regularly, and his officers and those from other agencies are well prepared, with years of training under their belts.

“This training allows us to come together and really talk about what mass casualties look like. Not only are the officers going to come and stop any threat there, but also just to provide the type of level of care that the people need,” Tyus said. “When these officers and these people get to the scene, it’s more ‘How are you’ and not ‘Who are you?’ And so that is what we’re looking at today. You’re going to see some dynamic training today, and this partnership between all the agencies.” 

General admission for Fan Fest is free, with paid tiers for a more exclusive experience, and is expected to be where a majority of non-ticket holders for the matches will gather. Other local agencies will also be involved when it comes to coordinating response to incidents, including the Marta Police Department, Georgia World Congress Center Police Department, and Georgia State University.

Practice makes perfect was the sentiment of the day, and the agencies emphasized their commitment to using the training to ensure locals and visitors are safe and well cared for during large-scale events such as the World Cup.   

“It’s something we do every day, but working on this large a scale, it gives us the ability to practice for those things, especially with FIFA coming up and many other large-scale events that we hold every day in the city of Atlanta,” said Shane Smith, the senior divisional manager for Grady EMS. “Our part of it is basically the transportation of all those patients that we would have, working with the regional coordinating hospital, which is Grady, a level one trauma center here, and making sure that we get those patients the care that they need, and we get them to the proper location.”

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