Dirty
Bomb Exercise a Training Success
JEFFERSON CITY, August 22, 2005-Initial reports from last Wednesday’s
multi-county radiological functional exercise shows Missouri’s
terrorism response capabilities are strong, while weaknesses found
were minimal.
“I
was very impressed with all of our state and local partners' performances
during this exercise,” said Mark James, director of the Missouri
Department of Public Safety. “I would rate our performance in
this exercise as excellent. I saw emergency operation centers up and
running, with participants working well with each other as well as
communicating with the other cities involved in the scenario. However,
we will continue to conduct exercises such as this to make sure we
are continually improving our performance for the best possible protection
of all Missourians.”
The dirty bomb exercise allowed federal, state and local participants
at the Kansas City Emergency Operations Center (EOC), the St. Louis
Emergency EOC, and the State’s EOC in Jefferson City to work
through a scenario in a no-fault, learning environment. Both the Kansas
City Emergency Management Agency and the St. Louis City Emergency
Management Agency (Kansas City and St. Louis CEMA) are the groups
that house the cities’ emergency operations centers that are
enacted whenever a major crisis or event takes place in the city.
SEMA coordinates statewide efforts in a major disaster.
The scenario envisioned terrorists detonating dirty bombs at Kauffman
stadium in Kansas City and in downtown St. Louis at America’s
Center and the Edward Jones Dome. A dirty bomb is an explosive device
that contains some kind of radioactive emitter. Participants in the
drill had to coordinate first responders and evacuation efforts as
well as plan for long-term mitigation of the terrorist actions.
The goals of the exercise were to test the ability of the State Emergency
Management Agency (SEMA) to activate the state EOC (SEOC) and coordinate
a unified state response to a radiological terrorism event, to see
how well communication was shared between the three cities,
to gauge how well resources were coordinated at each EOC, and to see
how well the groups could manage a mass casualty incident.
Overall,
exercise controllers and evaluators were impressed with the amount
and variety of local participation at the city EOCs and with the depth
of state participation at the SEOC. Participants and controllers noted
they liked the intelligence build-up prior to Wednesday’s drill.
The intelligence build-up added a realistic aspect to the exercise
by logically preparing participants for the dirty bomb attacks by
terrorists they had been receiving information about. Especially beneficial
to training was the presence of city health departments at the city
EOCs. The Kansas City Health Department participated at the Kansas
City EOC as well as activated and communicated with their Health emergency
operations center.
At
each site, there were many things that can be improved. After-exercise
opportunities for the SEOC include having the director outline goals
and primary objectives for the event to set the stage for all other
staff before diving into response activities, coordinating response
and resources better with all participants present rather than just
within one individual agency, making a true Joint Operations Center
(JIC) by placing all PIOs together instead of seated with the agency
they represent, and making a greater effort to implement the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security’s National Incident Management
System (NIMS) into operations center procedure.
After-exercise
opportunities for the Kansas City EOC include more regular use of
E-team, an incident tracking software program, to insure participants
have greater proficiency in using the computers, locating the JIC
in a room other than the EOC, and utilizing the unified management
team (UMT) to be policy-makers instead of spending too much time with
their agency within the EOC.
After-exercise
opportunities at the St. Louis EOC include having more support staff
such as scribes and runners for such an event, conducting telephone
conference calls with all cities involved rather than just communicating
between two people over the phone, using high frequency radio communication
in the event phone service is unavailable, establishing a unified
command structure so that one group such as first responders do not
take over emergency management direction, having more public information
officers (PIOs) present to get a unified and prompt message out to
the public and media, and integrating E-team, an incident tracking
software program, into the St. Louis EOC.
The
U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Domestic Preparedness
(ODP) funded and helped control and evaluate the exercise. ODP will
issue the State a written report detailing strengths and opportunities
within 30 days of the exercise. ODP will then meet with exercise participants
following the written report to see how recommendations can be implemented
to better the efficiency and effectiveness of the EOCs and participants
involved.
For
more information regarding the dirty bomb exercise please contact
Rebecca Knefelkamp at (573) 526-4097.