BUTLERVILLE, Ind. – From May 16 to May 20, the Indiana Department of Homeland Security in partnership with the Federal Emergency Management Agency took over Muscatatuck Urban Training Complex for National Level Exercise 2011, a full-scale exercise designed to “examine the Government’s ability to implement local, state, and federal catastrophic incident earthquake response plans by simulating an earthquake incident in the New Madrid Seismic Zone.”
If that quote from the NLE Controller/Evaluator Handbook seems like a lot to take in, consider this: on Feb. 7, 1812, an earthquake estimated to be a 7 on the Richter scale emanating from the New Madrid fault line was so powerful that it made the Mississippi River run backwards in the Midwest. What would happen if that earthquake hit today?
This is the question that the National Level Exercise was created to answer. MUTC was, once again, turned into a city in distress, representing Mount Vernon, Ind., in the heart of the quake zone.
Emergency responders from IDHS districts 1-4 and 6 were called on to respond to Southern Indiana in order to participate. None of them, including Wayne Township Firefighter Mike Lewis representing Indiana Task Force One, knew what to expect when they arrived at Muscatatuck.
“We did something like this in Florida a couple of years ago,” Lewis told us. “But this is leaps and bounds better! The realism was amazing and made us work harder as responders because we were in the middle of smoke and fire having to rescue people.”
In the exercise, the earthquake affects 8 states along the New Madrid fault line – Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, and Kentucky – all of which are involved in the exercise creating national level participation. The exercise had participation from the highest levels of government to the lowest.
“This exercise is being followed from the White House all the way down to the courthouse,” said Indiana Lt. Governor Becky Skillman. “I was on a conference call with President Obama yesterday [Tuesday, May 17] evening and I assure you that this exercise is being closely watched.”
At 10 o’clock the morning of Monday, May 16th, the alarm was sounded that a 7.7 magnitude earthquake had hit the New Madrid fault line in the Wabash Valley Seismic Zone, Posey County, Ind. The quake, in game play, caused mass destruction and confusion throughout the Midwest as a 6.0 aftershock hit Mount Carmel, Ill., soon after. Natural gas lines ruptured; buildings fell, trappings victims inside; basic life support systems such as water and food were destroyed; trains hauling hazardous materials derailed; bridges over the Wabash and Ohio rivers became impassable; and general chaos existed. In other words, the worst situation possible was thrown at the responders.
The Indiana National Guard’s 53rd Civilian Support Team was the first on the scene. The team responds to determine the nature of an incident – especially if it is of a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear origin – and assist local first responders. They were followed closely by Indiana Task Force One, a unit comprised of emergency responders from Fire Departments in and around Marion County, Ind., and civilians from various professional backgrounds across the state. According to their website, Task Force One “is comprised of several specialized disciplines, including: Technical Rescue, Search, Hazardous Materials, Medical and Logistics.”
“We practice like we fight,” said Indiana Task Force One Urban Search and Rescue Task Force Commander Bill Brown. “Training and practicing search and rescue skills are the key to a successful operation when the alarm goes off and this is a real-world natural disaster setting that we respond to.”
Each of the first three Indiana Department of Homeland Security districts was given a day for their part of the exercise to practice and respond, being thrown in head-first and getting no rest until their job was finished. As soon as one district was finished, the events would be reset for the next district to do until they were finished. District One – covering Lake, Porter, La Porte, Newton, and Jasper counties – were given Tuesday, District Two – including St. Joseph, Elkhart, Starke, Marshall, Kosciusko, Pulaski, and Fulton counties – was given Tuesday, and District Three – represented by Lagrange, Steuben, Noble, De Kalb, Whitley, Allen, Miami, Wabash, Huntington, Wells, and Adams counties – worked Wednesday.
Throughout the entire week, District Four – Benton, White, Cass, Warren, Fountain, Tippecanoe, Carroll, Clinton, and Montgomery counties – was tasked with fire suppression training while District Six – Howard, Grant, Tipton, Madison, Blackford, Jay, Delaware, Randolph, Henry, Wayne, Rush, Fayette, and Union counties – was tasked with emergency medical services.
During the week-long exercise, emergency responders were inundated with controlled smoke, fire, destroyed vehicles and buildings, mannequins made to appear as victims in dangerous situations, and live role-players playing the parts of victims of the earthquake.
Dave Downey, National Task Force Leaders Representative for 20 US&R Teams, wanted to take part in the exercise in order to work the bugs out of the system. “This exercise was designed to stretch our national response system to its limits,” Downey explained. “What we want to do is plan for the worst-case scenario and something even worse than the worse-case scenario.”
Over the week of training, all of the military and civilian, local, state, and federal personnel had to learn to come together and work with each other to achieve their objectives. Problems that popped up were identified quickly and fixed, but if a fix could not be found right away, the problem was annotated so that a solution could be found before a catastrophic event actually took place.
According to Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator William C. Fugate, this exercise was mandated by congress to test our emergency management capabilities. “We have been able to adjust this exercise to truly reflect how we respond to disasters in this nation,” Fugate told the press during an interview at MUTC. “And that is local and state supported by the federal government.”
Previous exercises had been top-down focused exercises with command and control coming from the federal government. This exercise was different in that it was controlled and led by the individual states with the federal government in a supporting role.
Adm. James A. Winnefeld, Jr., commander of U.S. Northern Command, visited the exercise in order to get a first-hand look at the training going into the country’s emergency preparedness. “I wanted to come for my second visit to Muscatatuck and take a look at this great training center and see the activity that is going on here,” Winnefeld said. “It’s an opportunity at the tactical level for us to train on some of the very, very important skills that we’re going to need to help save American lives in this country if, heaven forbid, we actually have a natural disaster such as an earthquake [of this magnitude].”
By the end of the week, the training proved to be very well received by those involved. Lessons were learned which will impact the way that emergency response is handled for years to come because Muscatatuck Urban Training Complex is set-up for full-immersion training which can replicate anything from a building fire to a downed aircraft to a rubble pile in which victims must be rescued.
“For a lot of people who have not been on a real emergency site, this [MUTC] is about as close as you can get to a true disaster environment,” Fugate went on to say. “This facility gives that 3-dimensional or visceral impact. A lot of people who have gotten into it, we’ve had to tap on the shoulder and remind that it’s only an exercise because that’s the kind of realism you get here.”
Adm. Winnefeld agreed, saying “I absolutely see this as a national treasure here. There is a huge transformation going on in our chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear response enterprise and this is going to be the heart of the training. Muscatatuck has plenty of business in front of it, I’m sure.”
However, Mike Lewis said it best and most succinctly when he simply exclaimed “this place is freaking awesome!”
This story was assembled with the assistance of and input from Trevor Nelson, Ben Beam, Sara Molina, Kristen Fleetwood, and Dylan Smith of the Vincennes University Electronic Media Department.
| Date Taken: | 05.20.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 05.20.2011 14:08 |
| Story ID: | 70770 |
| Location: | BUTLERVILLE, INDIANA, US |
| Web Views: | 585 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
This work, IDHS and FEMA train for natural disaster at MUTC, by Brad Staggs, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
