If last week’s simulation was any indication, the local chapter of the American Red Cross is poised and ready to respond to a local disaster.
The Island County chapter recently participated in a Chapter Disaster Readiness Exercise Evaluation, a national standards requirement every three years. The local chapter’s was postponed because of Hurricane Katrina. Barbara Johnson, Island County chapter executive director, said the delay proved very beneficial.
“We were way more prepared for it,” she said. “We’ve got much better materials like cots, blankets, things like that. If we had done the it when we were supposed to, our materials and resources in house would not have been as good.”
Approximately 25 people, all representatives from the three Island County teams, met at the chapter office to deal with a fictitious apartment fire at an actual Oak Harbor location.
“It was just an excellent tabletop,” Johnson said. “Everybody worked well together. Nobody got upset. They all knew their jobs.”
Facilitators used a script as the team worked cohesively amid frenetic circumstances.
“The facilitators also put injects into it,” Johnson said. “We had one inject that was a house fire completely separate from the other fire. It was a very good exercise. I had observed one a while back just to see how it ran and then seeing ours run, I was impressed.”
Johnson said she had always heard the phrase, “military takes care of military.” Last week’s exercise proved it.
“If something like that fire were to happen, basically one phone call to the base and they have their own procedure they set up,” he said.
With the military families out of the equation, the Red Cross group was able to narrow its focus.
“The military families from our facility would have been taken and dealt with by the military,” Johnson said. “Once we knew the military families were being taken care of, we could focus on the civilian population.”
The simulation is designed to be a three-day progressive event. The response room was set up on Tuesday and the simulation took place Wednesday. Participants met on Thursday for a briefing.
“This was invaluable,” Johnson said. “You learn how to get manpower, how to get supplies. Everybody knew what they were doing.”
The executive director said the county teams gained real-time experience from last August’s bomb threat at the Tyee mobile home park in Coupeville and the barrage of windstorms.
“With the Tyee, that was North Whidbey’s first real experience,” Johnson said. “We opened a shelter down in Coupeville. We hadn’t opened one in a number of years. And then with the windstorms, we opened the senior center in Oak Harbor and we had communication with Trinity Lutheran on the south end and our Camano team worked with the senior center and other places.”
At the briefing, Johnson said the group was pleased with its performance and reaction time.
“There’s a lot that we learned from it,” she said. “There’s nothing negative, just things that we can build on. But there weren’t any real shortfalls, nothing glaring. It was very well done. We all felt really good at the end.”
The Red Cross is always looking for volunteers. Johnson encouraged anyone interested in volunteering to attend the North Whidbey Disaster Action Team meeting next Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at the chapter building on Ault Field Road. For more information about volunteering call 257-2096.
