Consultant's take on drill is full of holes, Boyd says

By Jim Maniaci
Cibola County Bureau

GRANTS — Emergency management officials in Cibola County learned a great deal from January's simulated disaster drill at a railroad siding by a Milan park.

But one official in particular was highly critical of the consultant's report, reviewed by the Cibola County Local Emergency Planning Committee on St. Patrick's Day at the Coyote del Malpais Grants Municipal Golf Course meeting room.

Tony Boyd, who was the on-scene incident commander at Kearns Park, directly challenged many of the observations and conclusions by consultant Clark Reynolds.

Local perspective

Boyd repeatedly hammered at:

• The drill was called off far too soon by the controllers (referees), not even going the schedule of two hours. He and other CCLEPC members believed the responders should have been allowed to continue the drill, the 10 Grants High School students made out in life-like moulage to simulate wounds could have been released because of frigid weather conditions and mannequins on the ground would have been sufficient. Boyd noted that the previous week a simple single semi-tractor-trailer wreck on Interstate 40 to which his department (and others) responded lasted almost six hours, yet the widely scattered and under-equipped agencies in the county were given only 120 minutes, according to the script, and 90 minutes in actual time, to receive notification, mobilize, drive to the scene and perform their functions.
  
  
• Demands to send rescuers into the mock terrorist explosion of railroad tanker cars covered by a sniper actually two bombs were scripted to go off would have resulted in more than 10 deaths and were absolutely wrong. He repeatedly emphasized that he would never send in rescuers until they were properly outfitted and briefed, and then only if the scene was secure with a SWAT team starting to move in to neutralize the scripted sniper when the federal-state-consultant referees halted the drill because of the bitterly cold wind.
  
  
• Contradicting the consultant's statement that there was no unified command at the scene, he said he was in constant contact with Milan Police Chief Jerry Stephens and Milan Volunteer Fire Department Chief Keith Austin, although they lacked a mobile command center to use. Normally the Grants Fire-Rescue Department's mobile center would have been available, but the Grants fire chief who is no longer in the city's employ chose not to participate in the drill, although the city is by far the best-equipped department in the county, especially for hazardous materials incidents.
  
  
• Boyd also criticized being monitored by unqualified evaluators.
  
  Boyd said that the normal decontamination field facilities were not available, and he was left with secondary facilities and gear to handle the situation, which was being done, but apparently not fast enough for the script.

Lack of communication
The Acoma Fire-EMS-Community Health Chief and everyone at the debriefing agreed communications remain a problem because of differing frequencies, but that is being solved with the presentation by Michael Liestikow of the ham radio operators community of a list of various frequencies being reserved across the state for emergencies.

Boyd emphasized the need to cross train likely commanders and supporting officials through an incident command staging and training course, along with the need for more and better gear to protect first responders. He said his department is applying for another $65,000 worth of such gear.

Participants noted both hospitals in the county did well in their part of the drill.

The January exercise culminated a 4-step process which had included another field drill two almost simultaneous terrorist-caused explosions in Grants in the fall aimed at giving experience to those in the Emergency Operations Center in the Cibola County Sheriff's Office just outside the Grants city limits.

Self-help
Several participants in the debriefing emphasized that agencies in the county generally work well together because no one entity has enough people, gear and equipment to handle large disasters alone. The cooperation and joint operations were viewed as a continued plus for the county.

Many more people had attended the regular CCLEPC session which was before the debriefing. Those who were able to stay for the debriefing were Jordan, Boyd, Liestikow, Ira Antonio, Judith Nurenberg, Sue Riley and Marla Mitchell.

The consultant's report was 56 pages long, not counting background attachments which Jordan had included.