Training for worst-case scenario

By kyle hollinger

Staff Writer

What would happen if a motor vehicle accident caused a poisonous anhydrous gas cloud to drift across the city?

What if a measles outbreak had recently occurred to a large number of individuals and needed treatment quickly?

And what if both of these things happened simultaneously, in the dead of winter with roads covered in ice while it was 10 degrees outside and the accident was only a few short blocks from an elementary school?

That is exactly the scenario presented to members of Putnam County emergency services on Thursday as part of an annual situational training exercise that builds over the course of three consecutive years.

The event brings together Homeland Security, mental health services, doctors, the Board of Health, DePauw University officers and CERT teams, as well as both law enforcement and firefighting agencies to ask questions and to determine the ways in which this wide-array of organizations would work together to help deal with such a catastrophe.

The "table top" exercise presented Thursday, is the first in the three-year process and provides emergency service providers with a timeline that lays out a variety of scenarios which serve to further complicate how an event of magnitude would be handled.

Next year the event, organized by the Putnam County Emergency Management Agency, will be a "functional" exercise, resulting in a more real-world application of the scenario presented on paper and discussed by the 40 or so participants at the table top exercise.

Finally, in 2016, an actual simulation of the event will take place to truly test the methodologies that will have been discussed, refined and developed based on the previous two years of the exercise.

Preparation for such a catastrophe includes everything from information dissemination practices, to medical access, evacuations processes, lock-downs and testing methods used by various agencies.

As an example of the refinement of processes and techniques that results from these situational exercises, part of the discussion Thursday involved the training frequency and use of corrosive chemicals by the Greencastle Fire Department.

While the department has been performing the requisite annual training for exposure to corrosive materials, it was recommended that its training become more frequent, making it a part of a training regimen that occurs monthly.

With this annual training exercise, departments not only walthrough the role their organization would provide in such an incident, but it provides the opportunity to share information between agencies while sitting together in the same room, a difficult task given the wide-array of specialists in attendance.

Next year's event will take things one step further and will help these agencies continue to prepare to handle a complex, emergency situation in which the general public would rely almost entirely upon their expertise.