KINGMAN -- Joe Whitaker is anticipating the end of annual simulated disaster drills associated with Newport Chemical Depot with some reservations.
"I'm looking forward to being done with this part of it all because there's a lot of other stuff to work on right here in our county, in terms of emergency management,'' he said.
But whether the Fountain County Emergency Management Office, which he heads, will exist after this year is uncertain, he said during the annual disaster drill that tests the readiness of the chemical depot and surrounding agencies to respond to a spill or other emergency.
A mock decontamination site set up at the park a few miles northeast of the Newport plant in neighboring Vermillion County allowed Fountain County emergency personnel and members of the Kingman Volunteer Fire Department to practice response to a supposed collision between a school bus and a truck carrying organic phosphate.
Although the exercise in Kingman did not directly involve a leak of VX -- the deadly nerve agent stored at Newport -- federal observers with the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program oversaw the drill.
Whitaker's department is funded entirely by the government, but that funding will end when the destruction of the chemical weapon VX is complete -- tentatively by the end of next year, he said.
The creation of Fountain County's local emergency management agency was mandated in the early 1990s by the federal government because an accidental release of VX could affect at least the southwestern part of Fountain County.
Nearby Parke County in Indiana and Vermilion and Edgar counties in Illinois also take part in the drill.
Fountain County's emergency management office started with a part-time employee, but now has two full-time staffers whose focus includes natural disasters.
Connie Sanders, the office's deputy director and public information officer, took the job in November knowing it had an uncertain future. But it's been worthwhile because she's been learning a lot.
"This is my first field exercise, too, which is kind of exciting,'' she said. "I've taken part in 'table top' drills before but that's just not the same as actually being out here seeing everything in action.''
Fountain County Commissioner David Ziegler has taken part in the annual drills for years.
"It's been nice in a way because if the commissioners (from other counties) come, we can talk, like we never really get to otherwise,'' he said.
Fountain County has yet to address the issue of whether to try to keep its emergency management agency once the federal funding ends, Ziegler said.
"As far as discussing it," he said, "we haven't gotten to that point yet.''