Borough practices hazmat response during statewide drills

WASILLA — There were a lot of superlatives used when describing the Alaska Shield series of disaster drills held across the state this past weekend.

This was the first time the state had ever deployed its mobile hospital, something unique to Alaska as the only state to own this type of mobile emergency equipment. It was the largest disaster drill the state has staged and the largest in which Mat-Su has participated. It also was the first time Alaska has hosted a so-called “capstone” event.

“That was the exercise of the year basically for the whole country,” Mat-Su Borough Emergency Manager Casey Cook said.

Bea Adler, the borough’s safety program coordinator, said the borough had been planning its Alaska Shield events for the better part of the last year.

Cook said the borough’s exercises wrapped up over the weekend, but there are still events going on in other parts of the state this week. He said there were people participating from Hawaii, Washington state, North Carolina and Nebraska. Most were National Guard units, but there were volunteers from some charities, too.

The Nebraska Guard unit was on hand Saturday at Central Mat-Su Fire Department Station 5-1, the one closest to Mat-Su Regional Medical Center.

The scenario was designed to put the borough’s hazardous materials response unit through its paces. Cook said the hazmat team trains throughout the year on various components of its job and does a full-size drill about once a year.

But Saturday’s was larger than anything the team has done before. It included coordination with the Valley Mover bus system and that Nebraska guard unit, which flew to the exercise on a Blackhawk helicopter that landed at the hospital, which also participated in the drill.

Adler said volunteers playing the part of chemical exposure victims were sent through decontamination tents, where crews in hazardous material gear washed them off — the water was warmed to keep the exercise tolerable.

Actors playing victims included Community Emergency Response Team members, Junior ROTC cadets from Colony High School, as well as some borough employees.

“They are people who were willing to put on a bathing suit,” she said. “So, as you might imagine a lot of them are pool staff.”

She said that in the scenario, victims had been sheltering at the fire station since the fictitious 9.2-magnitude earthquake, which was impetus for the rest of the weekend’s drills.

A truck hauling hazardous materials crashed nearby, dealing chemical burns to the people inside the shelter. Tanks on the ground and a hose spitting out steam added an element of realism. Crews established a radius around the truck as a “hot zone” they had to stay out of.

“That’s why no medics will come in and help them until they’ve gone through the decon,” Adler said of the decontamination process.

She said the borough hazmat team isn’t certified to respond to a Level-A situation and thus had to summon help, in this case from the Nebraska National Guard unit with its self-contained suits.

Cook said the last time the borough had a Level-A event was a few years back when a truck hauling chlorine flipped over on the Parks Highway. The borough called in a guard unit from Anchorage.

“Luckily, they just happened to be going to Fairbanks for an exercise,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.