AUBURN – Emergency officials from around Lewiston and Auburn brought their best and newest homeland security vehicles together at Pettengill Park on Tuesday.

“This may be the first time we’ve had all of these vehicles together in one place,” said Joanne Potvin, director of the Androscoggin Unified Emergency Management Agency.

There was no emergency. The display was meant to show how much work emergency personnel have done.

Vehicles included the massive $420,000 EMA command vehicle, two smaller incident-command trucks belonging to the Lewiston and Auburn police, the Auburn Fire Department’s command truck and two county hazardous-material trailers. One contains decontamination gear, showers and tents. The second carries a Kubota utility vehicle, a small truck designed to carry personnel.

“When you have a hazardous material emergency, personnel can’t get closer than a thousand feet unless they have a full suit on,” Potvin said. “But we’ve found that people in the full suit can use up half of their oxygen walking the 1,000 feet to the incident and back. This takes them there and back more efficiently.”

The equipment represents about $1.5 million in Homeland Security grants, and each vehicle is designed to be ready if disaster strikes. The vehicles will respond to emergencies around Androscoggin County, as well as Oxford and Franklin counties.

“Almost as important as the vehicles is the personnel’s ability to work together,” said Michael Grant, trainer for the Maine Emergency Management Agency. He was on hand as 19 emergency workers completed a high-level incident management course Tuesday afternoon.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has directed about $3 million in grants to Androscoggin County and its municipalities for emergency management and homeland security projects over the past three years. The federal government has made completing the classes a requirement for getting future grants as well as other money.

The national system was adopted in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks as a set of procedures that emergency personnel could use to make sure disasters – such as hurricanes or ice storms, terrorist attacks or hazardous chemical spills – are contained efficiently.

The system became more critical in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security made adopting and understanding the guidelines a requirement for any government agency getting federal homeland security grants.