County gets an "A" for disaster drill

Local officials earned high praise from state and federal evaluators for their performance during last week's statewide disaster drill simulating a terrorist anthrax attack.

"You guys did great," Homeland Security evaluator Gordon Ravenscroft told the officials gathered at the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) at the police station. "Be proud of what you've accomplished. You exercised almost the total system."

Elmore County served as the lead county for the state-wide drill, which also involved national assets from the Center for Disease Control. It was the first time the state Department of Health had taken part in a "real world" disaster exercise, with every health district in the state testing some of its procedures.

But Central District Health, a four-county district that includes Elmore County, had the most extensive role, including setting up a Point of Dispensing (POD) unit where medication (actually M&Ms) were handed out to hundreds of volunteers who showed up to be "victims."

It also was the first time that the full EOC had been set up. A tabletop exercise held in March had shown a number of problems, but last week's efforts "were like night and day," Ravenscroft said. "There was much better communication. You sat down and went to work," he told the officials.

The EOC is designed to bring all of the leaders of local government and emergency service officials together in one room to coordinate disaster operations.

Under the disaster scenario, a statewide newspaper, The Daily Planet, had had terrorists put anthrax in the circulation room, contaminating every paper sent throughout the state.

The drill began the previous Monday when the manager of a store in Mountain Home (simulated by using the old K-Mart building) noticed the white powder on the Daily Planet distribution racks. Using volunteer "victims," the Mountain Home Volunteer Fire Department decontaminated all the store employees and customers, and law enforcement agencies collected samples of the powder and sent them to Boise, where the state lab confirmed the presence of anthrax.

Tuesday, following a declaration of emergency from the governor, the state health departments began ramping up their disaster teams and Wednesday the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta sent a seven-man team with two U.S. Marshals to Boise, accompanied by 300,000 ten-day "courses" of medication from the Strategic National Stockpile that were then redistributed throughout the state.

On Thursday the EOC was set up to deal with the crisis and Central District Health put together its POD at the junior high. Health officials had estimated they would need to provide medication to 800 people an hour if they were to meet their goal of protecting 95 percent of the population within 48 hours after the outbreak of some biological threat, such as the anthrax attack or a bird blue pandemic. Only about 350 volunteers had been signed up to take part in the exercise, but some were sent through twice. Each of the "volunteers," had been given cards telling them what roles they would play in the drill.

At the POD, triage teams took medical histories and determined if any of the "victims" were displaying symptoms of anthrax. Of the 502 people they sent through the POD in the first hour, 152 were sent on to the hospital.

Since the drill scenario envisioned the entire state being hit by the threat, leaving each county to its own resources, that would have severely overtaxed the 20-bed hospital, but Greg Mauer, the hospital administrator, said beds would have been set up in the halls and at the newly acquired Good Counsel Hall to handle the overflow of victims.

At the EOC, city and county officials made decisions on the disaster declarations they would need, the legal steps necessary to activate reserve law enforcement personnel and how their respective governments would fund extra manpower and services required.

Mauer and Central District Health officials coordinated their response.

Health department and city police public information departments prepared a series of press releases outlining the symptoms of anthrax and what citizens should do in the disaster, and held press conferences to get the word out where the local press played the role of "the annoying reporters."

Law enforcement authorities identified potential homebound victims and began going door-to-door to check on them, while other officers were dispatched with medication to be distributed in the Glenns Ferry, Pine, Featherville and Atlanta areas. In addition, police set up security cordons around the EOC, the POD and the hospital.

The county's disaster services coordinator, Chief Deputy Nick Schilz, who helped put together the scenario, had an extra surprise for the EOC teams. He had half a dozen people role-playing angry, frightened citizens, break into the EOC, disrupting the process. They were calmed down and escorted out of the building.

Schilz also served as facilitator at the EOC, helping coordinate each of the various response teams set up at the police station and calling for regular briefings roughly every 45 minutes, so everyone would know what everyone else was doing and could raise questions, offer comments or solutions to problems that were thrown at them throughout the day.

Ravenscroft and Center for Disease Control officials were particularly pleased with how quickly the EOC teams made the critical decisions and coordinated their actions. Most of the tactical decisions were made within the first two hours after the EOC was set up, and at that point the officials there began looking beyond the events of the day to the long-term implications of the scenario, such as how to decontaminate 5,000 infected homes in the county and where to put residents until those homes could be properly cleaned.

Fire Chief Phil Gridley pointed out that it would easily take two months to do a proper decontamination of all the residential homes infected.

Decisions on where shelters would be set up, how to obtain food and water, bedding clothing and showers, and how it would all be funded were all discussed.

At the end of the day a tired group of officials met to do a "hot wash" debrief, which will be followed by more extensive analysis in the coming month.

Councilman Mark Russell suggested that more federal agencies should be included in future drills and it was agreed that the local National Guard unit should be invited to take part in the county's disaster planning teams.

And everyone offered their praise for the hundreds of people in the community who volunteered their time to help out as "victims" both Monday and Thursday.

The purpose of the drill, Ravenscroft and Schilz noted, was to identify problems now and adjust planning, so that in the future, if a "real world" disaster strikes, coordination of efforts would go as smoothly as possible.

Overall, evaluators said Elmore County had performed extremely well, and were pleased with the decision-making, pre-planning, and level of coordination shown.

"The real winners in this exercise are the people of this community," said Mayor Joe McNeal.

"I think we're so far ahead of the game now that if something really does come along, we have a chance to deal with it."