Being prepared…
November 1st, 2007, 11:36 am · Post a Comment · posted by Linda Weller
Last Sunday, Alton Square management sponsored a mass casualty drill for local emergency responders, including its own security members.
Deputy Chief Greg Bock, of the Alton Fire Department, spent a couple months meticulously planning every detail and enlisting live and manikin victims. He also rounded up a donation (lending) of 300 pieces of lumber from Lowe’s to serve as part of a dump truck’s ill-fated load. Bock also constructed a particleboard box “truck” that was to have crashed through the glass doors of the shopping center near the U.S. Post Office and injured 30, including himself, shoppers and police officers.
As with another mass casualty drill in 2001 at Alton Square, I arose early on a Sunday morning (usually my day off work), clocked in at The Telegraph shortly before 7 a.m. and drove to the shopping center. There always is a certain amount of suspension of reality in such drills, as everyone at the scene and everybody waiting at the fire station knows the “disaster” call is coming.
Participants also know there are no real victims, no real fires or dangerous gunmen and that their lives aren’t in danger. Also, we know that no reporters or photographers would be on hand to await the call and we wouldn’t know ahead of time what was to happen, as we did Sunday. Also, we members of the media certainly would have trouble getting inside that building in event of a crash of that magnitude.
That said, the drill was not about whether firefighters from Alton and the Godfrey Fire Protection District could show up, put out strobe-light “fires” and drag out the injured and dead from the piles of debris.
Its purpose was to ensure that the comand and control procedures officials have in place function effectively, particularly when it involves cooperation among several other agencies. Besides Alton police, mall security and the two fire deparments, other drill participants were Alton Memorial Ambulance Service, LifeStar Ambulance Service Inc., Madison County Emergency Management Agency, American Red Cross, Alton Memorial Hospital, Saint Anthony’s Health Center and LifeStar Ambulance Service.
At the same time, the drill prompted the first activation of the city’s Emergency Operations Center at the Alton Law Enforcement Center, for which city department heads and even aldermen received training. The mayor called in about a 10 city department heads and staff, Jack Quigley of the county’s EMA and Al Bertram of the Red Cross. Alton is one of a few communities in Southern Illinois which has come up with a plan, undergone training and now complies with provisions of the National Incident Management System. The drill, along with the preparation and training last year, enabled Alton to qualify for federal grant money for emergency equipment.
I am sure some people who read my account of the drill and the EOC activation in Monday’s edition of The Telegraph wondered about importance of the practice - or why the newspaper even covered it. It’s probably true that a terrorist won’t bomb a building in Alton, but the chance might be greater that they could do so in St. Louis and tax its fire, medical and police resources. In event of such an event, responders here could be rallied under the Mutual Aid Box System, NIMS and the Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System to assist the Missouri emergency responders.
Sunday as I watched the firefighters perform their drill duties - less complicated and safer than what they face in real life many days - I thought about the scenarios that more likely would require such a multi-agency response: Certainly a truck could hit a crowd of people in Alton, perhaps diners at one of the sidewalk cafes or people watching one of the parades in the city. The escalator at Alton Square could fail and toss a dozen people to the main floor. A gas line could explode at a school, City Hall, a hospital or any building Downtown with dozens of employees inside.
More thinking: One of the excursion boats making its way up the Mississippi River or docked at Riverfront Park - including Argosy Casino - could have a fire, explosion or both. (Argosy does hold such drills with local police and firefighters each year, but never have allowed media coverage inside). The “big one” (earthquake) that the late Iben Browning had predicted for the New Madrid fault in 1990 - with disastrous rumblings here - also could hit the area. And, although I keep hearing that tornadoes never hit Alton, I was born and raised in Nebraska and believe tornados know no boundary lines in the Midwest. Two of them hit Edwardsville within the first few years after my family had moved there. That’s not that far from Alton.
These are just a few plausible events I thought of that could happen, without even bringing in crime scenarios.
Covering this drill fits with my biggest reason for doing any story - it’s something readers need or may want to know about. Secondly, in this instance, people driving by Alton Square saw all the trucks and might have wondered what all the commotion was about. They would look for an explanation in Monday’s paper or online.
Anyway, it’s interesting to me to see how emergency responders would set up a command center, public information centers and physically handle the rescue or recovery and treatment of victims. Reading about this planning should give everyone some peace of mind, even if they don’t like to think about disasters this close to home.
