Yuba City Red Cross training today

The Yuba City office of the American Red Cross will run through a flood scenario in Sutter and Yuba counties as part of a disaster exercise today and Wednesday, and people off the street get to play victims.

Beginning both days with a phone bank to "call in" volunteers, the exercise will move at 11 a.m. to churches serving as evacuation centers.

There, people who show up will be registered as "victims" and treated as if they were flood evacuees, said Gloria Jennings-Graham, disaster services office manager for the American Red Cross of Northeastern California.

"The purpose of the exercise is to see how well we would respond to an actual disaster," she said. "We want to be able to do this as efficiently as possible."

The shelters will also have cots and blankets, and making sure it's set up before "evacuees" arrive is also a test for Red Cross volunteers. Jennings-Graham said the exercise will also include relocating the operations center, as if the office on East Onstott Road was also flooded.

Today's exercise will center on the First United Methodist Church on Highway 20 in Yuba City, while Wednesday's will be at the Hallwood Church of the Nazarene on Highway 20 east of Marysville.

Jennings-Graham said Red Cross officials hope to have more than a hundred volunteers take part in the exercise.

The Yuba-Sutter region has had three major floods in the last 60 years: In Yuba City in 1955, in Linda in 1986 and in Arboga in 1997.