From the Plainview Daily Herald
By CRAIG CUMMINGS
Herald Staff Writer

City officials spent the last two days acting in a state of high alert while going through mock disaster scenarios all over the city as part of a regional emergency response exercise.

The exercise, sponsored by the state and part of the Governor’s Emergency Management Plan and the Department of Homeland Security, involved almost all facets of the city’s police, fire and sheriff’s departments, Department of Public Safety, Emergency Medical Services and the health department.

The two-day exercise was a regional effort, with Lubbock and Plainview — the two largest cities in the designated region — forming the core group. Other entities within the region participating included Levelland, Brownfield and Wolfforth, as well as Texas Tech University.

The exercise involved testing and practice of the different services’ intercommunication and response capabilities as well as management of disaster scenarios.

“This is a really new experience for all of us,” civil service director Dale Simpson said.

Members of the Plainview Fire Department on Tuesday went through exercises involving the containment of biological agents in response to a mock chemical attack.

On Wednesday, the health department set up a point of distribution, or POD, to simulate distributing immunizations to citizens from the Strategic National Stockpile, or SNS, during a disaster situation.

Rather than the real thing, volunteer disaster victims at the POD on Wednesday received M&M candies as immunizations.

In the event of a real emergency, the city would set up four PODs at strategic locations across the city, which are kept under wraps until an actual event.

A mobile command center vehicle was on site throughout the exercise. The state-of-the-art, self-contained vehicle is capable of directing communications between the city as well as other counties and state and federal agencies during a disaster, as well as a number of other high-tech functions.

The Salvation Army also participated in the exercise, with a special vehicle equipped to provide food and water to those officials working in emergency response situations.

A similar exercise was scheduled to take place last year, but was interrupted by the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans where certain services were required.

For the exercise, city and county officials combined into one central headquarters location to better communicate and initiate procedures.

“We’ve got city and county basically coming out of one location, which is really much better for communication,” City Manager Greg Ingham said. “Plus the manpower situation is much better that way.”

Basically, the state wanted to test the regional plan, called South Plains Multi-Agency Coordination Group, to gauge preparedness for a disaster situation.

“This is a whole new thing. This group was just created,” Ingham said. “It’s another layer of resource allocation. They are trying to make sure that we can allocate all of the resources in the region before we go on up to the state level.”

“What got all of this started was after Katrina. They found out down there, for example, they’d need 37 generators,” Patrol Captain Lonnie Burton of the Plainview Police Department said.

“They would call PDC (Protective Design Center is a part of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) and they would go find them (generators) somewhere else when, come to find out, not more than 100 miles away from there were generators just sitting. They didn’t know what was in the region.”

Now they have started a database that all the cities from this area participate in, so we know from the database what kind of equipment is in there, who has what and what is available,” Burton added. “That’s what the group basically is supposed to do.”

“We were one of the first groups to go with something this big where we’ve got this many different entities involved,” according to Ingham.

The exercises ended Wednesday evening.

(Contact Craig Cummings at 806-296-1356 or craig@plainviewdailyherald.com)