By DELANIA TRIGG, Register Staff Writer
Sirens, lights and the sight of so many emergency workers made some drivers pause and stop to ask what was going on in the small southwestern Cooke County town of Era Friday morning.
The scene looked like the site of a motor vehicle accident involving two school buses, but it was only a test.
Emergency responders from various Cooke County agencies arrived at Era’s First Baptist Church for a mass casualty exercise. Not everyone was aware of the event which was scheduled months in advance.
An Era volunteer firefighter, stationed near the intersections of FM 922 and Bolivar Street, said a motorist passed near the scene, slowed and turned around.
“She saw the school buses and she said she wanted to make sure the kids were okay,” the firefighter said.
The exercise brought together volunteer firefighters, state troopers, emergency management officials, EMS responders, members of the media, and others to test how well these life-saving organizations can work together during a crisis.
“We’ve already noted some things,” Emergency Management Coordinator and County Fire Marshall Ray Fletcher said of small defiencies in the county’s collective response to an emergency. “Everything isn’t perfect, but it isn’t supposed to be,” he said, adding that the purpose of the exercise is reveal both good and not-so-good aspects of the county’s emergency response plans so that adjustments can be made.
Fletcher, in sunglasses and casual clothes, was working the scene in a professional capacity. He was also an observer taking notes and interacting with participants.
Dave Gehr of the county’s Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) was also in Era for the exercise.
Gehr said his organization had six team members on the scene. The volunteer group has 15 members who have achieved community emergency response training certification in a program administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, he said.
“We’re looking at the details, the planning and the responses of the emergency personnel,” he said.
Gehr had a nine-page emergency functions checklist which included evaluations of the agency’s alert and notification systems, communication, areas of coordination and control, damage assessments, medical services, public works, resource management and warning efforts.
Gehr said the county office of emergency management provides equipment and training for CERT, including shirts with the CERT insignia, CERT caps and ID badges for the volunteers.
Friday’s scene was a wreck involving students from the Valley View and Era independent school districts and a passenger car.
The students arrived on the buses and played the roles of injured people.
Firefighters removed the students from the bus. Some had to be carried to a triage spot on the north side of the church building.
The students waited in the sunshine, many using the free time to lounge in the grass while workers evaluated their conditions and determined how best to transport the injured to local medical centers.
Every aspect of the exercise was designed for authenticity. Students complained of the pain from their injuries and firefighters and troopers assured them they would be okay as they removed the injured individuals from the buses.
Firefighters also brought along cutting tools to extricate a victim from a wrecked car donated by a local tow truck company. After Era VFD members cut through the door of the maroon Oldsmobile, EMS responders and a state trooper removed the victim — a Moss Lake VFD firefighter — from the wrecked car.
Fletcher called the event “a great opportunity” to fine tune emergency protocal.
“The participating agencies have shown great cooperation,” he noted.
He said area high schools are required to conduct safety exercises during the school year. But schools are not asked to perform elaborate mass casualty events like the one held Friday, he said. The exercises are good for everyone who gets involved, he added. “(Mass casualty exercises ) are good hands-on training for first responders, he said.
“These events put our training to the test and allow us to see the big picture. They let us know where we need to focus,” he said.
Valley View Superintendent, Kathy Garrison, said her school holds at least two bus evacuation drills each year — one in the fall and another in the spring.
The district also assesses student and teacher response during a mock lockdown situation and a school evacuation event, she said.
The lockdown exercise tests the actions administrators and teachers would take if an individual with a firearm were in the school, for example.
Last year, Valley View ISD staged a bus wreck exercise on the school’s football field parking lot with participation from emergency personnel, local hospitals, Cooke County Emergency planning officials, the state highway patrol and EMS workers.
Sixteen Valley View students took part in Friday’s exercise, she said.
Ten Era students acted as accident victims.
Garrison said Era Superintendent Jeremy Thompson had to drive a group of students to the hospital when an Era bus driver was called away at the last minute.
Some curious onlookers watched the event from their front yards. Others walked around with cameras, stopping to watch the interaction of emergency workers and victims.
Friday’s exercise was similiar to another event held in 2006 in which approximately 150 Lindsay ISD junior high and high school students, parents and staff as well as North Central Texas College students and other volunteers played the role of victims in a simulated bleacher collapse during a football game between Lindsay and Muenster.
The victims will be taken by ambulance, Care Flite and self transport to North Texas Medical Center and Muenster Memorial Hospital.
Fletcher said the purpose of the response exercise was to ensure that adequate communications capability exists between participating agencies, to assess Cooke County’s heath services capacity for handling a mass casualty event, to identify any challenges faced by individual entities, to allow first responders and medical professionals to practice their mass casualty triage system and to allow Cooke County educators and administrators to test their own emergency disaster plans.
Garrison said emergency response exercises can go a long way toward preparing school districts for tragedies.
“We pray that it never happens, but we prepare in case it does,” she said.
