Emergency services to train for possible crisis

When a fertilizer bomb inside of a yellow Ryder moving van exploded in the Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, nine stories crumbled, 800 people were injured and 168 died.\nThings were bad, but according to John Hooker III, coordinator of Monroe County emergency management, not as bad as they could have been. \nDisaster training does exist and Hooker says it's a life-saving learning tool. Many emergency aid personnel at the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing had attended a simulated emergency training session less than a month before the real disaster hit.\nThis Friday and Saturday, local fire, police, medical services, hospitals and other emergency agencies will test their responses to full-scale simulated chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive disasters.\n"Basically, we're trying to stress our resources within the district, because that's how you handle disasters within your district," Hooker said. \nThree hundred volunteers will act as victims, dressed in torn clothing with bloodied limbs and moulaged faces. The point is to test the Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan in place in Monroe and other Indiana counties and to see how these plans will work across jurisdictions. \n"My gut feeling is that we'll be stressed past our capacity, put behind the eight ball very quickly," said Mark Webb, battalion chief for the Bloomington Fire Department. "But it will help define our strengths and weaknesses."\nWebb will function as the operations chief, establishing the framework and organizing resources for the response. But in a disaster of this size, even if simulated, Webb admits it's possible he may end up in triage himself. \nThe exercise is funded by federal Department of Homeland Security grants and has a budget of $800,000.\nMark Brostoff, associate director of undergraduate services at the Kelley School of Business, has integrated the exercise into two School of Public and Environmental Affairs courses he teaches -- V368: Managing Government Operations and H432: Health Care Marketing.\nBrostoff said his students are required to act as participants and record their observations. Students in V368 will assess the government's disaster response. Students fin H432 will study how officials move victims through the health-care system.\n"Instead of being in a gallery looking down, they're going to be in the pit," Brostoff said.\nStudents participating will write detailed evaluations that Brostoff will later collate into a report. The report will be submitted to the Monroe County Emergency Management Department. \n"Each student will actually have a signature on the report," Brostoff said. "It allows them to understand the importance of first response and to know how professional first responders act. These are good people and they're dedicated." \nBrostoff also sees this exercise as a potential eye-opener for local government officials. \n"Our first response will be OK, but I think there are going to be a lot of lessons learned for our elected officials," Brostoff said.\nBrostoff stresses the importance of having 72-hour emergency kits at home and making other emergency plans in case of a disaster. \n"We as a community always have the expectation that someone else will take care of us," Brostoff said. "Let's learn from this, let's look at it and then come back to the table"