East Oregonian
June 5, 2003

Emergency teams know their stuff

By CASEY WHITE of the East Oregonian
cwhite@eastoregonian.com

PENDLETON - Tuesday's annual Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program drill was a success, organizers reported Friday. A majority of the performance measures set prior to the event were met.

The exercise took place at the Umatilla Chemical Depot just west of Hermiston and at emergency response centers surrounding the Army facility.

It tested everything from emergency communications and measures taken to protect the public in case of a disaster involving chemical weapons at the depot to interstate closures and decontamination measures.

Real-world activities that interfere with the exercise play are taken into consideration during the analysis.

The exercise "poses challenges for the whole community to deal with," said Joe Miller, a site representative for the Army Chemical Materials Agency.

The weather for the exercises posed a challenge for volunteers and emergency response teams. Unusual north winds forced the plume cloud in an unanticipated downward motion. However, as time progressed throughout the evening, the wind vectors went in various directions.

"We used real-world weather, but we didn't realize we'd get real weird weather at the same time," said Keith Alleman, senior systems analyst for Innovative Emergency Management, Inc.

Alleman presented the exercise's strengths and weaknesses to about 25 volunteers and emergency response workers at the Umatilla County Justice Center in Pendleton Friday. He reported that the incident command system "managed itself very smoothly."

The county liaison officers were a real asset to the exercise's success, he added, as were the volunteers.

"The volunteers showed a very high level of competency," Alleman said.

Performance measures for the schools received high evaluations as well, partly due to the fact that by the time the exercise began Tuesday, no schools were in session so evacuations were not needed. However, several schools practiced their evacuation plans earlier in the day and earlier that week. New mobile units for the schools provided training opportunities for teachers and students.

"There was a very strong performance to protect the schools during this exercise," Alleman said.

Alleman also praised the new advanced technology and equipment used throughout the exercise.

However, the day did not go without glitches. The only performance measure that failed was regarding decontamination. Emergency workers did not attach bands to patients after they had been decontaminated, resulting in congested patient flow.

Other performance measures responders and volunteers need to improve upon are maintaining communication capability and practicing back-up techniques in communication technology in case problems occur. If a computer problem occurs, respondents need to be able to maintain communication using other means, which have yet to be determined. Not having enough hot water for the decontamination equipment also posed a problem and needs reevaluation, evaluators said.

In order to take on these challenges, exercise evaluators suggest all procedures be documented, and that the documentation identify issues that need resolution and track that progress on a tracking tool. They also suggested sharing site experiences with other sites on the Depot to gain more information.

Meg Capps, CSEPP program manager for Umatilla County, had another suggestion to possibly implement for next year's exercise.

Capps suggested starting the exercise at 10 p.m., which is when this year's began to wind down. The start time was changed from the morning hours to 5 p.m. three years ago. By starting at 10 p.m., Capps said, the response teams and volunteers will learn to respond in the case of a nighttime emergency, which theoretically could happen.

"Let's push ourselves beyond our own comfort zones," Capps said.