Preparing For The Worst: Clark County Emergency Crews Work Together Mock Disaster

Preparing For The Worst: Clark County Emergency Crews Work Together Mock Disaster

By Mike Scott and Kevin Fox

A hauntingly long series of pager tones sounded the start of the Local Emergency Planning Committee’s fall disaster drill, which was held Saturday, November 7.  Emergency crews from across Clark County came together again to prepare for situation they hope they never encounter.
This “incident” involved two tanker trucks and two school busses.  Although the actual site of the drill was the Clark County Fairgrounds, the scenario revolved around an accident at Hwy 136 and 61, testing the skills of Alexandria Fire Chief Jamie Steele by making him the incident commander.  A surprise twist came with the discovery of a meth lab in a fifth vehicle involved.
 “Overall, the mock disaster went very well,” said Chuck Jenkins, Local Emergency Planning Committee Chairman.  
“These training exercises create a good training experience with different emergency response crews working well together. Those different departments did work well together and very professional too I might add. The advantage of these mock disasters is that you can make a mistake and walk away from it, whereas in the field under real emergency conditions that may not be so. So you pick up ideas and tips that will stay with you when you have to make those real emergency calls. I would also like to add that Jamie Steele, Alexandria Fire Chief did a good a job as Incident Command. Following the training exercise we took time to go over how it went with officials who were on hand to critique our performance. But I’m sure that we will continue to look at what went well and what we need to improve on at the next LEPC meeting, which is this Thursday evening. I also would certainly like to thank those involved who helped in putting on the mock disaster including those who provided the vehicles as well those who portrayed wounded people.”