Whether its tornadoes, hurricanes or blizzards, Ethan Place is ready.

On Wednesday morning the assisted living/residential care facility held a mock evacuation as part of Rhode Island Long Term Care Mutual Aid Plan (LTC-MAP).

The LTC-MAP was established in 2013 as a support system in the face of an emergency or disaster between the 154 nursing homes and assisted living facilities in the state.

Between yesterday and today the Department of Health (HEALTH) and partners Russell Phillips & Associates will host four mock evacuations. The first was at Ethan Place. Sandra Lacross, administrator of Ethan Place, said that because the facilities are small and have their own generator it serves well as a “learning tool or test run.”

While regular residents were safe in their rooms, “mock residents” from other organizations came to be a part of the procedure, using charts mirroring those of real patients and Skittles as medications. They walked through several check-points before exiting the building with paperwork and returning to their own places of employment. To keep track of “patients” and to ensure no one got lost along the way, the mock residents had to fax their paperwork to Alysia Mihalakos at HEALTH.

Mihalakos, interim chief at the Center for Emergency Preparedness and Response Rhode Island at HEALTH, said the plan acts as “insurance” so that if one or more of Rhode Island’s nursing homes or assisted living facilities had to evacuate there would not only be a facility to go to but medical and transportation services available to assist.

During both Hurricanes Sandy and Irene there were evacuations, which are a last resort, and this new plan will make the process safer and more efficient.

Mihalakos said an evacuation is a “daunting process,” but with this mutual aid plan, instead of relying heavily in municipal services, different organizations within the LTC-MAP can provide assistant to the affected facility.

“We find that if something bad is happening at the nursing home, chances are the city is too. This way we take up less of those services in an emergency,” she said.

Andrew McGuire, a fire and emergency management consultant from Russell Phillips & Associates, said more so than anything else the evacuation plan focuses on resident safety.

“There are a lot of pieces to an evacuation, and the main part here is keeping track of patients, knowing exactly where they are at every point of the process, so we can alert family and friends and also guarantee they get the care they need,” he said.

Currently, Ethan Place has nearly 30 patients and in an actual emergency has their own 14-passenger van for transportation purposes.

Lacross said if the facility ever had to evacuate the whole process, depending on the number of patients, would take a half hour to 45 minutes.