Milwaukee County is having its first countywide highrise fire drill. Crews from a dozen departments throughout the area created a protocol that each department agreed to follow when responding to a highrise fire. Monday, those crews used the Intercontinental Hotel to do the drill.

Crews practiced responding, pulling hose, contacting hotel guests and then reviewed the timed results. The goal of the drill was to give departments real response times to figure out where they could improve in an emergency. Some highrise buildings have water systems on each floor, but some older buildings in the city require fire crews to pull hose from outside the building all the way up each floor.

Milwaukee's Deputy Fire Chief Aaron Lipski and Assistant Chief Dan Lipski say the protocol was a major undertaking and is the first of its kind. They looked at other cities that had highrise causalities, like Chicago, to build Milwaukee County's protocol by learning for other mistakes. There will be several other drills in the months to come.