Problems pop up in Oregon's chemical depot alert test

This story was published Thu, Mar 29, 2001

By Mary Hopkin
Herald Oregon bureau

HERMISTON - An extensive test of the Oregon Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program's emergency alert system over the past two days revealed a few problems.

Oregon CSEPP conducted the shakedown Tuesday and Wednesday on the four-part system that would be used to notify the public in case of a chemical weapons accident at the Umatilla Chemical Depot, said Cheryl Humphrey, of CSEPP.

On Tuesday, the outdoor warning system, which includes five highway message reader boards and 42 off-post sirens, was tested.

"We performed a total of 74 different tests Tuesday, and in order to make all the tests happen, we had to initiate 944 commands on the console boards," Humphrey said.

Those console boards are at all four local emergency operations centers - Umatilla County 911, Morrow County 911, the Hermiston Safety Center and the Umatilla Chemical Depot's emergency operations center.

Humphrey said each center tested its equipment by turning on the message boards and sirens. Field teams monitored the message boards to make sure they were working.

The only problems occurred when dispatchers tried to activate actual emergency tones.

Humphrey said field teams unhooked the speakers on five of the large sirens and attached small hand-held speakers to them to give dispatch centers a chance to send actual emergency tones and messages without being so loud they would alarm people.

Equipment at the Umatilla County dispatch center in Pendleton was unable to cancel a test tone on one siren and unable to turn the tone on at another siren.

"In that instance, Morrow County was able to step in and turn them off and on," Humphrey said. "That's the nice thing about this system - we have three backups."

On Wednesday, CSEPP tested all the tone alert radios, which are the emergency radios placed in homes and businesses to alert people if there is a chemical release at the depot.

The units are tested weekly, but this time a team of 32 people started calling residents and business owners around the county to make sure the units were working properly, Humphrey said.

"They made 1,525 calls and talked to 500 people," Humphrey said.

The biggest complaint the callers heard was that the volume on the radios was too low and residents had a difficult time hearing the messages.

That wouldn't happen in an actual emergency, Humphrey said.

Although each unit has a volume control on it, the volume of the actual message can be controlled from the emergency centers. In a real emergency, the volume on the message would be turned up so it couldn't be missed, she said.

 

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