Premium ContentClick on Premium Content on the Featured navigation bar for information.
LINCOLN — If terrorists could be defeated by acronyms and abbreviations, they would have no chance against this bunch.
The Nebraska Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) sponsored the state’s annual terrorism-response exercise, called TERREX ’09, on Wednesday. It was held at both the State Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and the Joint Information Center (JIC) in Lincoln.
The scenario: The Wildlife Liberation Alliance (WLA) breaks into ADM, an industrial facility for refining ethanol, in Columbus, Neb., and steals two loaded tanker trucks. Police put out a BOLO (“Be on the lookout”), and two days later, a Scotts Bluff County 911 operator gets a call about a smoking tanker truck abandoned on a railroad crossing. The caller says there’s a funny smell around the truck and liquid is leaking out.
Cue the emergency management folks.
Such exercises give participants a chance to practice how they should respond in a real emergency and allow officials to use Paraclete, a communications system that links agencies from across the state whose radios otherwise would be incompatible, organizers said.
“When a situation does happen, we’ve already thought of the things we should focus on,” said Lt. Gov. Rick Sheehy, Nebraska’s homeland security director.
Sheehy and Al Berndt, NEMA’s assistant director, mainly stayed out of the operations center during the exercise, held in the NEMA offices 22 feet underground near the Devaney Sports Center. They handled the big-picture policy decisions that would be needed. People acting as first responders and local officials worked in a separate room.
In the operations center were representatives of state agencies that would be on hand after a real hazardous-materials spill at a train crossing: the Department of Roads, the State Fire Marshal’s Office, the Department of Environmental Quality, the Nebraska State Patrol.
“We need a decision-maker down here,” Berndt said, so the process can move smoothly and quickly.
Across town, the people at the Joint Information Center handled the release of information to the news media and the public.
Past exercises have focused on pandemic flu — helpful for what’s happening now with H1N1 — and agroterrorism, in which, hypothetically, a pathogen was intentionally introduced into livestock. The latter scenario prepared officials to handle a nonterrorism-related outbreak of bovine tuberculosis in north-central Nebraska this summer.
“The more familiar you are with the process and the people, the better,” said Jon Rosenlund, emergency management director for Hall County and the City of Grand Island. “With knowledge and experience comes confidence.”
Rosenlund will be among those taking part in the exercise’s second phase on Friday, when crews from Hall County, Grand Island and Hastings will respond to a real fire involving a semitrailer truck. Responders will treat the situation as if the truck had struck a railcar.
Contact the writer:
444-1109, bob.glissmann@owh.com
Copyright ©2012 Omaha World-Herald®. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, displayed or redistributed for any purpose without permission from the Omaha World-Herald.
