Everyone involved undoubtedly learned some important lessons in the emergency response drill conducted in Long Branch last week.

The personnel directly involved in the exercise were able to learn the importance of fulfilling their role and sticking to their standard procedures. They also got some hard lessons in the limits to jumping into action without fully considering what the results of that action might be.

More important than what those direct participants learned as individuals, though, are the lessons for those who staged the exercise: Monmouth County, Monmouth Medical Center and the city.

Officials acknowledged that communication during the exercise was a nightmare. They quickly saw that having emergency personnel working on two communications frequencies would make a bad situation worse.

That is an issue that needs to be corrected immediately.

Greater emphasis also needs to be placed on communication if a large disaster is going to be dealt with effectively.

The most telling evidence of a communication problem was the hazards created when emergency personnel at the hospital were unprepared to deal with the victims because they did not know what injuries people were suffering from before they arrived.

In addition to making it harder to help the sufferers, that lack of communication could lead to even bigger problems, such as death.

The fact that the drill did not go off at the expected time also provided an important, if unintended, lesson. Many of the problems encountered in the exercise were attributed to bad timing caused by the late start, but real disasters won’t be sticking to anyone’s schedule.

The problems in the drill should not be viewed as a reason to point fingers. In truth, the drill did exactly what it should have: it helped officials pinpoint the deficiencies in the existing emergency response system.

It should be noted that the disaster scenario run-through was of a particularly thorny and horrific design and was set up to test the outer limits of emergency services capabilities.

In fairness, the wide ranging and problematic scenario used for the drill will not likely occur in real life.

Emergency officials have shown that they are more than capable of dealing with the day-to-day crises they face and, despite the difficulties, they do not seem far off from being able to handle even the biggest challenges.

As long as they correct the deficiencies uncovered, should a real disaster ever strike, they will be prepared to handle it.