Preparing And Praying They Never Have To Use It

Oskaloosa Fire "Rescues" another "Victim" from the mass casualty exercise Friday

Oskaloosa, Iowa – The anniversary of 9/11 was on the minds of most people Friday. Those who remember that day with an extra sense of sorrow are the very same people who were out on Friday morning to train for a mass causality event. They pray that it never happens. I will tell this story as if it was a real event, just as those that trained for it, treated it. What you are about to read was a training exercise.

At 9:11 a.m. Friday morning, the evacuation sirens began to wail at the Clow Foundry on the southern edge of Oskaloosa. Workers streamed from the building, and smoke was seen rising from portions of the building. A train car had over turned, spilling toxic chemicals and trapping and injuring people in the nearby area.

The Oskaloosa Fire Department had their first truck arrive on the scene about 4 minutes after the alarm was sounded. They were followed shortly by the Oskaloosa Police Department, the Mahaska County Sheriff’s Department, and Emergency Management from Mahaska County.

Firefighters "Rescue" a "Victim" that had been trapped (photo D.Hubbard)

Also arriving were two ambulances from Mahaska Health Partnership, and about three minutes after their arrival, two more fire trucks arrived on the scene. The attack truck, along with equipment, had also arrived.

The unmistakable sound of rotor blades were heard as Life Flight and Mercy One made landings to evacuate the most severely injured. They were cleared to land after the threat that their rotor wash could possibly spread any contamination further across Oskaloosa.

After the training had completed, the groups went into a debriefing. It gave an opportunity to ask questions of the group after the exercise.

Mahaska County Emergency Management Coordinator Jamey Robinson explained that the days exercise is called “a unified command”. What that entails, is one person making all the decisions for all entities on the scene with the assistance of department heads. Captain Dave Christensen was the incident commander and was in charge of the operations at the scene.

Local Police went out to portions of Oskaloosa in the Clear View area, evacuating residents from the danger. There, officers evacuated five residents were were home. Being during the daytime, many residents were gone for the day to work already. The Mahaska County Sheriff’s Office helped to suppliant the Oskaloosa Police Department in traffic control.

Members of the Mahaska County CERT Team assist "victims" and firefighters during the mass casualtiy event Friday (photo D.Hubbard)

John Grahek of Clow helped to provide information to incident command about Clow and the facility.

In total there were 27 “injuries,” with 15 of them being “fatalities” from the chemical spill that resulted from the train derailment behind Iowa Lumber. The chemical is used to chemically treat wood products.

The ever growing Mahaska County CERT team was also on hand to help assist the departments and also to help with triage of injured people. Clow has their own group of people that serve on the Mahaska County CERT team. John Grahek of Clow says they are supported by their parent company to policies and programs in place to have these kinds of committees and team members trained to respond to incidents if they were to have a disaster in their facility.

“Clow needs to be commended,” says Oskaloosa Fire Chief Mark Neff. “It cost Clow money. There’s no other way to put it. Clow stepped to the front and said we’ll use our facility for the drill site. Without community cooperation like that, these things become impossible to pull off.”

“When we can get these entities together, working together and so we start knowing each other, start knowing our capabilities or what we can’t do,” Oskaloosa Fire Chief Mark Neff said about bringing the different groups together teaches to them how to work better as a large group.

Life Flight and Mercy One provided air transport for the most "seriously injured" at Friday's exercise

“Practical application is always a great asset. Being able to actually go out and put it into a real life situation. I know that we do a lot of training where you go and they will show you how to do the paperwork or fill out the card, but putting a tag on a dummy is a lot different than actually putting a tag on someone. You actually have to draw the information from, find out what’s wrong, do our on the spot checks. I really like the opportunity to get out there and do that today,” Shannon Aoski of the Clow CERT team had to say about the drill on Friday.

So with the assistance of: CERT, SERG, Oskaloosa Police, Mahaska County Sheriffs Office, Eddyville Fire, Oskaloosa Fire, Cedar Township Fire, Oskaloosa Street Department, Mid-America Energy, Mahaska Health Partnership, Life Flight, Mercy One; along with the Emergency Management offices of Poweshiek, Wapello, Marion and Mahaska Counties, and most importantly Clow, the days training was beneficial in showing where the groups excelled and where they need to work, and in the end, making us all safer.