Mock drill tests county’s disaster response

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Mock drill tests county’s disaster response

Montgomery learns early in regional exercise that it will have to rely on its own resources and ingenuity

by C. Benjamin Ford | Staff Writer

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Chris Rossi⁄The Gazette

Lead evaluator Bob Jones is silhouetted by a weather radar monitor during a hurricane drill on Thursday at the Montgomery County Emergency Operations Center in Gaithersburg. Older weather radar footage of a hurricane off the Outer Banks of North Carolina stood in for the mock Hurricane Zephyr during the drill.

Forty-eight hours after Hurricane Zephyr dumped 12 inches of rain, damaged two hospitals and forced one of them to evacuate, and flooded streams and the Potomac River, Montgomery County emergency workers discovered the county was down to eight hours of drinkable water for almost 1 million residents.

The fictional hurricane was part of a regional drill last week to test emergency communications, coordination and responsiveness in case of an actual disaster.

Evaluators will spend weeks reviewing the work done at Montgomery County’s emergency operations center in Gaithersburg, but some of the lessons were picked up early.

In the past, the county has conducted disaster drills in isolation and assumed that resources from neighboring counties would be available, said county Homeland Security Director Gordon A. Aoyagi.

Thursday’s scenario involved Northern Virginia, Washington, Baltimore city and Montgomery’s Maryland neighbors. It quickly became apparent that each jurisdiction would be forced to rely on its own resources as much as possible, Aoyagi said.

At one point during the drill, Baltimore city called for Montgomery’s urban search and rescue team to help with a building collapse. But the unit was already busy in Montgomery, which meant Baltimore had to call in a federal search and rescue team from Pittsburgh.

Past drills also focused on preparations before a hurricane struck; Thursday’s took place 48 hours after the fictional hurricane made landfall to see how the emergency officials would cope with problems, ranging from looting and flood damage to water treatment plants to the need to evacuate homes near the county’s four lake dams.

The drill is intended to create realistic situations that emergency workers would face and add in more problems to challenge the county’s resources as much as possible, explained county spokeswoman Donna D. Bigler.

The drill also provided a rare behind-the-scenes look at the emergency operations center. Three large screens displayed weather radar showing the storm patterns, a regional map marked with disaster scenes and a running log of emergency calls.

More than 60 people worked in the county’s emergency operations center, including Red Cross workers helping coordinate shelters, recreation department staffers making sure evacuees were kept entertained and 911 dispatchers coordinating fire and rescue units. They mainly sat in three tiers with colored vests labeled with their titles in big letters. At times, groups huddled together to brainstorm solutions, but mostly they sat at computer monitors and worked phones.

While Hurricane Zephyr caused flooding, created a tornado, downed power lines and forced numerous water rescues, the county did not face mass casualties.

‘‘We’re fortunate,” Aoyagi said, ‘‘Montgomery County is on high ground.”