Star Senior Writer
For several months last fall, depot officials gave briefings on emergency response to all employees and provided them with the opportunity to ask questions on the procedures, said depot spokeswoman Joan Gustafson in a news release.
In today’s exercise, it will be readily apparent that the scenario isn’t real, the depot’s public affairs office said.
To begin with, the depot’s Emergency Operations Center will start the evacuation of employees by sounding the Westminster Chimes instead of sirens. In addition, community officials have all been warned in advance.
"You can never have an exercise that doesn’t have some artificiality built into it," said Daley Speer, an emergency engineer at the depot who is running the exercise.
In a true emergency, the depot’s sirens will give off a whooping sound that goes from high to low. Emergency alerts will also flash over the phone lines, computer screens and radios, Speer said.
Depot officials do not expect the exercise to place an additional traffic burden on the surrounding community, other than what occurs on a normal workday. The only difference will be that most employees will exit the depot earlier than usual. Only government employees in the eastern industrial area will be involved, about half the depot’s work force, or 2,200 workers in all.
The exercise will occur in the afternoon to minimize the disruption to depot operations, Gustafson said.
This is only one of several planned exercises, officials said.
Speer and other depot officials carried a portable projector and overhead screen into each shop to brief the workers on how to prepare for an emergency. The meetings helped dispel workers’ confusion about emergency procedures, Speer said.
Employees had several questions, such as what should they do in an emergency if they normally carpool to work.
They would have to pre-arrange a rendezvous point, Speer said.
And, what about employees who kept medication at work?
They might want to carry a small amount on them, he said, because they might not be able to get back to their lockers, and they might not be able to get home right away either.
A lot of employees asked about picking children up from school in an emergency. He told them that if the schools are over-pressurized, parents will not be allowed to get their children, because doing so would run the risk of breaking the pressurized seal.
Employees were also confused about where a chemical accident is most likely to occur. The main threat comes from the area where the weapons are stored, not from the incinerator, he said.
"We’ve lived with the risk for 41 years," he said. "But there’s a public perception because we’re doing this demil (demilitarization) operation that there’s more risk."
Other questions dealt with the nature of a chemical release.
A chemical accident would not disburse material everywhere equally like an atom bomb, Speer said. The agent can only travel with the wind. For the employees, that’s good news. The wind usually blows to the Northeast, away from the depot’s operations.
Speer said the depot will conduct a few more exercises with increasingly larger numbers of employees over the next several months until everyone on the depot grounds participates.
"I guess you got to crawl before you start running," he said.