First responders prepare for emergencies

By ELAINE SANDMAN

Staff writer

All Boundary County first responders train constantly for what might happen.

"We had scheduled a school shooting training scenario, and it turned out that our training occurred the day after the Virginia Tech shooting tragedy," Bonners Ferry Police Chief David Kramer said. "Our goal as first responders is to investigate the risk to our schools, no place is immune and we are no exception. We are always building on our training for all types of school hazards, but now our first responders are taking that training to a whole new high."

A full scale exercise is set for August to test and help prepare all the first responders in the community.

Kramer added that full scale exercise brings everyone together in a realistic training situation, from law enforcement to medical, and fire and support staff. The training teaches them how to respond and how to make sure all of their ducks are in a row should the community have an actual incident.

"We'll be working with the school district on this full scale exercise, there is a lot to get prepared and planned," Kramer said. Kootenai County's Office of Emergency Management is teaming up with our areas first responders to help.

Darrell Wasson from the Kootenai County's Office of Emergency Management, is the Homeland Security Exercise Coordinator.

"With the advent of the homeland security exercise and evaluation program, a series of exercises were created and are now offered for training," Wasson explained. "They start with a seminar of the emergency operations plan and discussion based exercises. This allows the first response community and incident managers a chance to come together to talk about how they would respond to and focus on specific hazards and possibilities. Then there are the incident training scenarios."

"The August 25 full scale exercise in Boundary County will test the total community response capabilities," Wasson said.

"During this testing, we'll be looking at everything from dispatching, to how the different first responders mesh together, as well as identifying the strengths, weaknesses and ways that we can improve," Kramer said. "The goal of this exercise is to not only bring all first responders together as a team, but also as valuable training for any type of emergency response within our community."

Kramer added that the county has some fairly new equipment such as a mass casualty trailer.

"We'll be able to see how that fits for staging during this full scale exercise," Kramer said. "We will also train and work through the incident command system as part of this exercise."

Although Boundary Community Hospital conducts its own training on a regular basis, this full scale exercise is a good opportunity to combine their training with the rest of the first responders.

"We are fortunate that the Bureau of Homeland Security has made some exercise training dollars available to cover the costs of the volunteers and expenses that are associated with this type of exercise," Kramer said. "We rely so much on volunteers in our community, and we work well together, but with this funding it is a good chance for a large scale exercise."

Wasson added that although the training is specifically designed as a response to a school shooting, it can provide effects above and beyond just that type of incident.

"We will test our coordination capabilities as well as our actions on how we work together, it will also further define roles and responsibilities," Wasson explained. "This training will get the first responders outside of their normal comfort zones by taking them beyond their day to day operations. It is designed to stress the responders and stress the system so we can identify strengths and weaknesses in plans, policy and procedures."

Kramer said that the entire community of first responders tries to be as prepared as possible, regardless of the risk, whether it is a hazmat incident or metro disaster, a lot of the same functions occur.

"The more we train together, the better prepared we are as a community," Kramer said. "A critical component to the success of the first responders during any major incident is to not over stress the dispatch center. We encourage citizens to not flood the dispatch center with calls or questions unless they have actual information that is specific to the incident. The dispatch system can be rapidly overloaded, for any major incidents, the first responders will try and post updates in major locations such as in front of City Hall or places where people can stop and get updated information."

Depending on the type of incident and where it occurs, as incident commander, Bob Graham will designate a public information officer.

"In my opinion, the media plays an important role in any of these scenarios of incident management," Wasson said. "The media is known to the public as a source of information and important in providing accurate information and preventing many rumors. They are also an asset to the incident commander in helping to get out what could be in some cases lifesaving information."