EMA hosts terrorism prevention exercise

Published 12:00 am Thursday, November 20, 2003

They hope it never happens here, but if it did, would they be ready?

More than 50 people representing more than a dozen state, local and federal agencies and

other support organizations gathered at the Lawrence County Emergency Management Agency Tuesday for a Weapons of Mass Destruction tabletop exercise.

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The exercise is meant to test the readiness skills of area emergency responders, government officials and any entity that would have a role to play in responding to or assisting in recovery from a terrorist attack.

Those who attended were given a scenario of a chemical explosion at a location in Lawrence County, and then were charged with determining what the course of action would be within the first four hours after the attack, what would be necessary between four and 24 hours following, and in the days ahead during the recovery and cleanup process.

Lawrence County Emergency Services Director Don Mootz said the purpose of the drill is to find out where the area responders' strengths and weaknesses lie and how best to correct the deficiencies. Another purpose of the drill is teamwork.

"This makes us aware of what our needs are, whether we need training, whether the agencies need equipment. We have to have a plan in place, but in case that plan doesn't work, we would need an alternate plan," Mootz said. "We're also learning to work together, and work productively together."

Sue Gunstream, environmental health director for the Lawrence County Health Department, agreed. "There are a lot of agencies here that would be working together if there was an incident, not just a weapons of mass destruction incident, it could be anything, a flood, or the ice storm we had back in February. And it helps to know who everyone is and what their roles are and how we can work together," Gunstream said. "This is good practice and good networking."

The tabletop exercise was sponsored by the Lawrence County Emergency Management Agency.