GETAWAY – A tanker truck potentially carrying a toxic substance and a vehicle collide on a highway.

Saturday, April 21, 2001

GETAWAY – A tanker truck potentially carrying a toxic substance and a vehicle collide on a highway.

That’s the scenario county emergency workers faced Saturday during a mock disaster training session.

Emergency crews were faced with several different components to deal with during the training exercise. Crews were required to identify the flammable chemical the tanker truck was carrying and rescue crash victims.

The exercise also gave the emergency workers an opportunity to determine what will and what will not work in a major disaster.

Emergency crews throughout the area, including fire, EMS, law enforcement, the American Red Cross and the Lawrence County, Ohio Amateur Radio Emergency Service/Amateur Civil Emergency Service (ARES/RACE). St. Mary’s Hospital participated as the designated trauma center that treated the victims and the Healthnet helicopter flew one victim from the scene.

ARES/RACE member Ken Massie said his group provided communications at the scene, the hospital and the American Red Cross headquarters in Huntington, W.Va.

The group not only provided radio service, but also a video broadcast of the event to the scene’s incident command post via radio.

The video of the scene, Massie explained, allows those at the incident command site to see what’s going on at the scene before sending additional crews. Massie said the need for the communication crews is because most areas in the county are outside of cellular phone service. In areas where cell phone service is accessible, a large volume of calls will cause a backlog in the cellular service.

The disaster participants were evaluated and results will be sent to the state. A critique was held after the event where emergency workers and community members provided input into the county’s emergency plan.

The state’s evaluation will be returned to the county with comments at a later date.

"We have a county plan for large-scale emergencies and at least once every four years we have to test this plan on a full-scale level," said the Local Emergency Planning Committee’s training chairman, Tom Runyon.

"We look at the plan, see what worked and correct it if we find problems."