Disaster Drill in Montana Scheduled for March 21
March 6, 2004
By ED KEMMICK
Of The Gazette Staff
Hundreds of emergency responders, law enforcement officers and medical workers will take part this month in what is likely to be the largest disaster drill ever staged in Yellowstone County.
There is no estimate of what the day-and-a-half drill will cost, but Jim Kraft, director of emergency and general services for Yellowstone County, said the expenses will be covered by grants from the federal Department of Homeland Security.
The drill will start on Sunday, March 21, when there will be a simulated gas release at Rimrock Mall. The next day, there will be simulated incidents at three different sites, including a truck-bomb explosion at the Conoco Refinery.
Under the disaster scenario, two other "terrorists" will be driving truck bombs with plans to attack the two other refineries in the valley. Instead, they will panic and drive to high schools - West High and Laurel High - park outside and enter the schools.
Kraft said there will be a simulated evacuation at the refinery, and many "injured" workers will be taken to the two city hospitals. At the high schools, officials will have to deal with the truck bombs in the parking lots while sending SWAT teams into the schools to apprehend the terrorists.
The drill will involve, besides Kraft's department, police and fire departments from Billings and Laurel, the Lockwood Volunteer Fire Department, all three refineries, American Medical Response, the Yellowstone County Sheriff's Office, Montana Highway Patrol, both hospitals, the Red Cross, the City-County Health Department, the FBI, the dispatch center, West and Laurel high schools and Rimrock Mall.
Kraft said planning for such a drill was begun a year and a half ago, and officials found out only recently that as a condition of receiving grants from the Department of Homeland Security, the county was required to stage such a drill. In addition to Yellowstone County, Missoula, Gallatin, Flathead, Cascade and Lewis and Clark counties will be required to stage a major drill before April 30, 2005, Kraft said.
Those counties, or at least the Local Emergency Planning Committees representing those counties, are also the jurisdictions in Montana that will be receiving the kind of largesse that is being showered on Yellowstone County by the Department of Homeland Security.
Billings Fire Chief Marv Jochems said all those counties will be getting the same kind of fully equipped hazardous-materials trailers that Billings is scheduled to receive this spring. All jurisdictions with such equipment will be required to respond to disasters in their regions.
The trouble is, Western Montana will be served by five counties, while all of Eastern Montana - everything east of Billings from Canada to Wyoming - will be in the Yellowstone County region. Jochems said Havre and Miles City are hoping to become eligible to serve as regional disaster responders, but for now there is only Yellowstone County.
But at least the money appears to be trickling down to where it's needed in Montana, Jochems said. In some states, government officials have complained that funds are bottle-necked at the state level or are being diverted away from the cities and counties that actually provide emergency services.
"In a lot of places, the money's not going where the rubber meets the road," Jochems said. "In Montana, I think we're doing pretty well."
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