Subscribe
Community
Trying not to giggle under ‘pressure'
County CERT team trains through mock disaster
Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photos by DARWIN WEIGEL
From left, Christian Hibdon, 12, his mother Brandie Hibdon and Robert Stevens, 14, all of Boy Scout Troop 451 in Lusby, play the role of victims Saturday during a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) exercise in Drum Point. At right, Rob Gordy of BMI Training applies more blood. The natural disaster exercise was organized by the Civil Air Patrol.
|
E-Mail This Article
An unaware passerby in the Drum Point community last Saturday might have been alarmed by the apparent sight of battered, bloody bodies, camouflaged vehicles with military personnel. But the Calvert Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) and Civil Air Patrol (CAP) were only preparing for a potential disaster, not responding to an actual one.
Under the direction of Lt. Col Wes LaPre, commander of Group III of the CAP's Maryland Wing, CERT and CAP held a joint exercise called CAPitol CERTainty to help the county prepare for the oncoming storm season and any disaster situations that may occur. While LaPre, who lives in Huntingtown and works for the county, said the actual exercise would only last about 30 minutes, many more hours went into preparation.
Instead of investigating actual disaster sites and treating people with real and significant injuries, emergency responders instead discovered information about selected sites on notecards atop neon poles. Each card would detail the state of the site – whether there was significant damage or not – and any other important information.
For instance, one card said that screaming could be heard in the background. LaPre said that rescuers would need to radio in the information before receiving clearance to investigate. Awaiting personnel at the site were volunteer "victims" covered in faux blood and makeup depicting mock injuries and bruises.
One woman had a massive hole in her head while an "unconscious" child bled from the ears and another's forearm looked like it had been split with a chainsaw. Each "victim" was prepared in the Patuxent High School parking lot, which served as the exercise's staging area.
Eight CAP planes from across the state also flew over the area in search of a radio transponder representing a capsized boat.
Part of the responders' task was to also survey and assess damage to structures, information that could be used by the county's emergency planners when applying for state and federal disaster relief funds.
"These are county folks. Of course, there are resources coming from all over the state because of the CAP part, but if this were a disaster and some other site wasn't affected, we'd be sending resources from that unaffected site to this site, so it's fairly realistic," LaPre said. "It's what we did for [Hurricane] Isabel. People from all over the state came to help with Isabel."
Back at base, the Drum Point Property Owners Association (DPPOA) office was converted into ground control for the operation. Seated at a round table was a safety officer, incident commander, information officer, liaison officer and operations section chief, who LaPre said would probably be the busiest.
A chaplain would also be seated at the table, and while his responsibilities during a mock exercise might be limited, LaPre said he could come in quite useful during a real-life emergency.
"We got kids doing this, and even adults who haven't been in the fire department before, come across a very injured person or a dead body, that can affect them for the rest of their lives," LaPre said. "So the chaplain sort of leads the counseling effort."
LaPre joined the Air Force in 1977 and served for 12 years before pursuing his master's degree. CAP, he said, qualifies as a second life.
The county's CERT team is part of a federal program that establishes emergency response units in communities across the country under the umbrella Citizen Corps organization that was established after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. About a half dozen teams have been organized in the county, and the 100 or so trained members support the local fire departments at a time of emergency and are prepared to go when called, LaPre said.
When he was preparing to hold a training exercise for CAP, LaPre heard in February that the CERT team was interested in doing something similar and decided that the two organizations could work together.
When trying to select an ideal location to hold the exercise, LaPre settled on the Drum Point community, which he said was one of the most well-organized in the county.
"That's one of the reasons they picked us, because we have a relatively aggressive CERT program here," said John Gray, the exercise's deputy incident commander and former president of the DPPOA. "It's not as successful as we'd like. We don't have as many people as we'd like, but it's an identifiable program."
Gray said that the exercise was very important for the community and the county in general. Some effects from Hurricane Isabel are still being felt almost six years after it passed over the county, and the Drum Point community, which sits along the Chesapeake Bay, remembers the storm as well as any.
"There's a big advantage to this because we can observe what they do. They're a far more complex organization than ours," Gray said. "It gives us an instructional period and it heightens the community awareness to the fact that we're preparing for emergencies."
