TORONTO (CP) - Firefighters cloaked in hazmat gear hovered at the edge of the Lake Ontario on Saturday morning, cautiously eyeing a neon green substance seeping into the water from a storm drain.
Ducks bobbed in the nearby water and a pleasure boat quietly sliced across the lake as the firefighters carefully tested the cloudy substance with instruments from a yellow hazmat kit.

The scene, unfolding in the city's west end, was part of a detailed training drill that put emergency services through their paces as if they were responding to a real chemical spill from a nearby plant.

Environmentally friendly green dye stood in for the "motor oil" that had "leaked" into a storm drain at Castrol Canada's Toronto plant. City officials had to trace the green dye oozing into the lake back through the drain system to see where it came from while firefighters trained in dealing with hazardous materials tested the substance.

The lakeside analysis took just minutes using a machine the size of a handyman's tool box and in reality would be precise enough to distinguish between different brands of oil.

Firefighters tested the air for toxic fumes and strung long floating booms out in the water to contain the spill. They also helped company staff mop up the mess using special absorbent materials while police kept rubber-necking motorists moving.

Ministry of Environment and city officials took notes in case negligence "charges" against the company under Ontario's environmental laws would be necessary.

The entire morning of training activities, which took five months of planning, was scripted like a movie, said Bob Leek of the Toronto fire department. Every routine detail of a real emergency response was factored in, down to a bogus but pushy reporter hounding company workers for more information.

A videotape of the entire exercise will be given to the company to be used for future training.

The script was based on a fictional forklift driver at Castrol puncturing a tank large enough to dwarf a delivery van, spewing more than 10,000 litres of oil into a nearby storm drain.

The response involved police and fire services as well as city officials, the Ministry of the Environment and Castrol employees.

Leek said a simulation is the best way to hone co-operation between the various agencies so they can be most effective in a real emergency.

Companies like Castrol don't pick up the tab for emergency services participating in the drill, but Leek said the practice firefighters get out of the exercise is worth the cost.

He said if company staff know how to handle the early stages of an emergency, it cuts down on the amount of time firefighters and police have to spend at an accident scene.

"What they do in the first few minutes is going to determine how long we are going to be here," Leek said.

Leek said gains in fire prevention allow the fire department to spend less time fighting blazes and more time training to respond to accidents and disasters.

Castrol facility manager Darco Vukojevic said the exercise was part of a company-wide push to prepare for emergencies.

"Our facilities worldwide conduct these drills every one to two years and it's basically to test our emergency preparedness in an unlikely event that there is an incident."

He said Castrol has never had to deal with a real emergency like Saturday's drill at their Toronto plant, the only place in Canada where the company blends oil.

Dozens of large Toronto companies that have dangerous chemicals on site are part of a network called Community Awareness Emergency Response, which organizes drills and provides safety information.

Leek said the group was formed to combat the sometimes frightening image chemical companies have in the community and to raise awareness about the ability to competently respond to disasters.

Saturday's exercise was the second of three simulated disaster drills in the city this year.