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| Delois Champ, emergency planner for the Calhoun County Emergency Management Agency, speaks on the phone at 'the Pit' during Wednesday's mock chemical accident at the Anniston Army Depot. Photo: Bill Wilson/The Anniston Star |
JACKSONVILLE – They call it “the pit,” the glassed-in chamber where emergency workers conduct operations if an accident happens at the Anniston Army Depot’s chemical weapons stockpile.
On Wednesday, the pit looks like a war room.
Phones ring, radios buzz, modems screech, and more than a dozen committed emergency personnel stare intently at computer screens.
Federal evaluators say local agencies have performed well during the annual training exercise to test the sharpness of Alabama’s emergency response. Throughout the day, which began with a mock crash at a chemical weapons storage igloo at the depot, the evaluators say local teams have exceeded expectations.
“Actually, it’s going very well,” says Deroy Holt, the Federal Emergency Agency’s lead evaluator. “Well, well.”
With the exercise, local officials are testing some improvements to the community’s emergency notification system. Last summer, the Calhoun County Emergency Management Agency configured warning sirens, tone-alert radios and television and radio emergency messages to reactivate every certain number of minutes, according to where the chemical plume is blowing. So far, the upgrades are working as planned.
There has been only one glitch, a minor problem with some equipment at a school that is serving as a pressurized shelter, Holt says.
Calhoun County Commissioner Robert Downing, who is watching the proceedings, says later that the county really does well with its exercises.
“These evaluators come in, and they’re pretty blown away by what we do here,” Downing says.
In the pit, which is in the Calhoun County EMA headquarters, months of two-dimensional plans become a three-dimensional reality.
Overhead, the simulated gas plume moves in rainbow colors across the screen. Today, the wind is blowing directly opposite its usual northeasterly pattern. In the cloud’s path is the edge of Calhoun County and the wide-open county of Talladega. About 500 residents live in the immediate danger zone.
The plume’s direction is seen as a big blue spike with a red tip. Blue is for the areas that are still safe, red shows the location of the cloud — right now, it is concentrated near the accident point at the depot. In a little while, after depot workers contain the site, the color yellow appears, growing at the spike’s red tip. It shows where the cloud has passed.
“No matter where this plume goes, if an accident happens I need to get everyone off Pelham Range,” says Dan Long, the new director of the county EMA. Long is hunched over his computer just above the pit, speaking short, almost militaristic orders into his headset.
On two other overhead screens to either side, emergency workers communicate with the other counties and keep a log of their actions.
At 9:04 in the morning, the depot rings the EMA’s emergency hotline to notify them an accident has occurred. Within seven minutes, most of the area’s emergency, law-enforcement and fire-fighting agencies have been called.
At 9:11, the sirens, radios and TVs, begin to sound warnings and instructions in the community.
At 9:15, Congressman Mike Rogers’ office is notified. Then, minutes later, more hazardous materials teams and street department workers are called in.
Messages are piling up telling which roads are safe, how many cars are going by.
Inside the pit, there is the sense of a lot of information coming in from different points. Eight workers huddle at a bank of computers, coordinating the response.
Their messages are a sea of acronyms.
“METs,” or meteorological towers at the depot tell the emergency management agency the wind’s direction and speed. This information is projected on the “GIS,” or geographic information system, the computerized map on the central overhead screen.
As workers track the plume’s progress, they use “TARs,” or tone-alert radios, and “EAS,” or the emergency alert system of TV and radio station messages, to alert the public to its trajectory.
The polygonal shapes on the overhead screen, the impact zones emanating from the depot’s perimeter, also are represented by letters and numbers. These are read out as the depot and county workers announce which zones to evacuate and which zones to shelter.
“It speaks highly of all these people to be able to process all that traffic,” Downing says.
At 10:22, the poisonous cloud leaves the depot’s perimeter.
“We’re off post,” Downing says.
Minutes later, he has a question for the lead evaluator.
“How are things looking, Deroy?”
“I think they’re looking outstanding,” Holt says.
In the blue section of the cloud’s Talladega path, residents are being told to exit their shelters, mostly homes duct-taped with plastic and fitted with air filters. Residents sheltering in the non-impacted parts of the pink zone of Calhoun County, the area immediately surrounding the depot, are standing by for orders. Soon, they are told they can leave their homes.
It’s 11:25 a.m.
Out in the parking lot, a crew of five Hazmat workers in blue protection suits practice decontaminating. Looking like something out of a sci-fi movie, they walk beneath a makeshift shower of PCV piping attached to a garden hose and enter a trailer to unclothe and wash again. Then they pop back out of the trailer’s far door, zippered up in a thin white jumpsuit and booties, baby new.
“It’s a pretty simple process,” says Mary Hudak, public affairs officer for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “It’s like how not to get the winter cold, wash your hands.”
Inside, Delois Champ, who was the county EMA’s interim director and now is an emergency planner, looks happy. The upgrades they made to their emergency response system have gone off without a hitch.
“It was textbook,” she says.
