Officials review Umatilla depot drill

This story was published Sun, May 13, 2001

By Mary Hopkin
Herald Oregon bureau

HERMISTON - Emergency management personnel say they are more ready and capable than ever to protect residents during a chemical accident despite failing half of the test measures evaluated during the Umatilla Chemical Depot's annual drill last week.

"If you look at the raw evaluation without looking inside, you are missing the story," said Casey Beard, emergency operations manager for Morrow County.

The depot stages an annual mock disaster exercise to test its employees, emergency systems and plans. At the same time, the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program works with surrounding communities and emergency staff.

That means hundreds of emergency workers from three counties and two states coordinating efforts to keep people safe in a chemical disaster.

"We set up a very demanding exercise and exposed ourselves to risk," Beard said. "But we wanted to get a feel of where we were and what needed to be fixed."

Federal, state and independent evaluators watched and critiqued every step along the way during the three-hour exercise.

And from the beginning, county and state personnel knew there were several areas they were going to fail; it was inevitable, said Meg Capps, Umatilla County's program manager for CSEPP.

Among the deficiencies, depot workers failed to notify off-post emergency staff within the required time.

Actually, the first notification went out within two minutes, but the size of the plume was underestimated. When the error was caught, notification had to be made again, but it wasn't made within the 10-minute window, so the test measure failed.

However, once counties received the correct measure, sirens, highway reader boards and tone-alert radios were all activated within the six-minute requirement.

Local schools, which performed daytime pressurization drills and evacuations, all passed the evaluation.

The evaluation team also gave counties a passing score in protecting at least 90 percent of residents who could be affected.

Capps said the emergency responders failed in the decontamination area because they lacked hand-held monitors that were ordered last week.

Emergency responders also failed to provide medical services in an adequate amount of time.

Evaluators required that decontamination units be set up and capable of taking patients within two hours of the initial notification.

All Oregon locations were ready to go within the time window, but a delay at the Walla Walla dispatch center caused the decontamination unit at Wallula Junction to miss the deadline by 31 minutes. And if one fails, all fail.

Similarly, not all hospitals were ready within the 45-minute window they were given to be ready. Although Good Shepherd Medical Center in Hermiston was ready in the allotted time, other area hospitals missed the deadline by minutes.

On the positive side, communication between all the emergency responders was better than it ever has been in the past.

"We definitely saw improvements," Capps said. "The money we've spent is truly starting to show. We are so much more capable of doing our jobs."

Gov. John Kitzhaber said he won't allow the depot to start incinerating the 3,717 tons of chemical weapons stored at the depot until he is sure residents living nearby are protected in the event of a chemical accident.

 

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