Joe Fitzgerald, deputy director of homeland security, left, and George Boaz, emergency management volunteer, look over a model map of a city. Hancock County COAD hosted a tabletop simulation activity Aug. 1 called Disasterville, in which a tabletop town was set up with small buildings and figures designed to teach how the community can respond to disasters.
Tom Russo | Daily Reporter
GREENFIELD – It was a rough day in Disasterville, to say the least.
Overturned cars, house fires and downed power lines – even a gas station engulfed in flames – were all among the pretend scenarios on the table Thursday night at the monthly meeting of the Hancock County EMA (Emergency Management Agency) and Hancock County COAD (Community Organizations Active in Disaster).
The public was invited to join members of the local Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) to discuss how to respond to simulated widespread disasters — in this case, a brutal thunderstorm with destructively high winds that wreaked havoc throughout town.
“You’re in your homes when the all clear has sounded, and you and your neighbors are making your way trying to come out of your houses,” said COAD coordinator Jim Peters, setting the scene at the county’s emergency management center in Greenfield.
Volunteers were divided into three groups to assess how they would proceed from there.
Using 12-foot-square diagrams of miniature towns, they set to work by reading the written descriptions of what was happening at various buildings throughout town, as well as the conditions of the people there.
One 2-inch-tall paper person was labeled as a 44-year-old male trapped under debris, calling for help.
Another note stated that a raging fire at a local gas station was making its way to the fuel tanks nearby.
It was a lot to process for a group of volunteers armed only with a walkie talkie.
Joel Heavner, an emergency preparedness contractor with the Hancock County Health Department, suggested his fellow “neighbors” each take a separate street to search for people in need of help, then report back to a rally point at the center of town.
He and his teammates worked together to figure out how to best tackle the long list of issues stemming from the storm.
Heavner said he thought it was important for community members to talk through potential real-life situations in order to be better prepared in case of disaster.
“It was encouraging to see so many Hancock County residents that take emergency preparedness seriously and take time out of their daily lives to help ensure their communities are prepared to respond to an emergency,” he said.
Peters, who led the training exercise, felt it was essential for people to learn how to respond to the unexpected.
“When something happens, we’re going to be dependent on our neighbors, and they are going to be dependent on us,” he said, “so I think the more time we can walk through situations and get comfortable with it the more likely we are to respond appropriately.”
After the exercise, the group reconvened to discuss best practices.
While not every neighborhood is going to have a trained first responder on hand, said Peters, anyone can learn how to become better prepared to help their families and neighbors.
To that effect, Peters utilized a tabletop activity called Disasterville — a toolkit promoted by the National CERT Association to teach disaster response skills like searching for injured victims in need of help.
“The importance of us knowing how to do this in each of our own neighborhoods is to make first responders more efficient when they get there. If we have the information that they need to get started, they won’t have to start from scratch,” he said.
To become better prepared, Peters invites the public to attend an upcoming three-part workshop at the Hancock County Public Library in Greenfield, where the county’s Homeland Security deputy director, Joe Fitzgerald, will teach how to create an emergency preparedness kit.
Because each class will build upon the previous one, guests are encouraged to attend all three sessions from 6:30-7:30 p.m. Aug. 13, 20 and 27.
To register, visit hcplibrary.librarymarket.com.
