LIMA — An old adage says experience is the best teacher, and that viewpoint is shared by the Allen County Local Emergency Planning Committee.
At Thursday’s meeting, the committee made the Jan. 10 Husky Lima Refinery explosion its required hazardous material incident drill for 2015. The committee is required to hold a drill, either in the field or in a table-top format, every year to ensure a coordinated response from both first responders and the private sector to any hazardous material emergency in the county.
“[The State Emergency Response Commission] allowed us to use that incident for our exercise for this year,” Allen County EMA director Tom Berger said. “There are a total of 10 objectives that we need to meet over a two-year planning cycle, and we’ve met eight of those, so we need to make sure we hit the other two next year.”
The criteria that were met in this incident were notification of response agencies, incident assessment, incident command, resource management, communications, response personnel safety, population protective actions and traffic access and control. Each criterion had a certain amount of objectives that needed to be met, with the LEPC meeting all of them.
“There were no notable recommendations that we needed to do to tighten our response efforts,” Berger said. “The coordination between both the industry and first responders was great. The communication was great, which at our end is a huge plus. It makes it a lot easier for us in the event of an emergency to effectively manage the situation and make sure our message gets out to the public.”
That coordination is also essential in other emergency situations, such as the recent flooding in the region.
“In everything we do at the EMA, we always look to plan for all hazards, so we try to take all hazards into account when we try to plan for an event, whether it’s a chemical release or a high water situation,” Berger said.
