Jacqueline R. Torres
Five people were found dead after an explosion in the Physics Building left 21 injured and three others hospitalized, according to a news release written at a mock disaster drill on Friday.
The release was just one facet of the eight-hour tabletop training session in the Campus Conference Room.
The drill is intended to comply with state and national requirements.
“Success in this test will be what goes right and what doesn’t go right,” said Paul Nieman, director of plant facilities, “as long as those things that go wrong are identified and then we fix them.”
Emergency Management Consultant Joe Horton was hired for $3,000 to update the college’s emergency plans and to teach the group of about 30 college employees how to operate in a crisis.
Horton taught for four hours, then the “class” applied their knowledge to a scenario they had no prior information about. The room buzzed with busy energy while five teams: Management, Operations, Planning, Logistics and Finance worked together to address the fabricated emergency.
In the detailed, written scenario, an individual from the Earth Liberation Front, a known terrorist organization, claimed responsibility for the explosion in the Physics Building.
Tim Oliver, vice president of administration, can recall three actual bomb threats to the campus. He is responsible for emergency preparedness and security for the college.
“It keeps us organized,” Oliver said of the exercise. “We could have to go for another week, 24-hours a day in a room like this in an real situation.”
Teams had to simulate the bureaucracy behind everything it takes a college to deal with the fallout of almost any type of disaster.
There was paperwork for everything. From closing down the campus, evacuating classes, offices and the Child Development Center, to designating entrances and exits for fire and medical emergency vehicles to ensuring a second shift of personnel could come in to take over emergency operations.
Confusion over such details as messaging and misdirection of calls to when an incident report should be filed were discussed at the close of the exercise.
“Getting the information documented is the most challenging part of this,” said Joy McCaslin, vice president of student services.
In an emergency the college must carefully record all the steps taken to comply with the National Incident Management System and the Standard Emergency Management System (NIMS/SEMS).
“SEMS has been the state standard for about 10 years and NIMS started up right after 9/11,” said Horton.
It has been several years since an emergency operations drill has happened on campus.
The research gathered from responses to the exercise will be complied into a report by Nieman.
“I really appreciated all the serious work from everyone,” said Pierce President Robert Garber. “If this were to happen tomorrow, I feel that we would walk into it with a lot more confidence.”