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ARSENAL PERFORMS CSEPP DRILL

By Rick Joslin/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Wednesday, February 28, 2007 9:41 PM CST

There are no Oscars or Tonys or Screen Actors Guild awards awaiting any players in Wednesday’s annual Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program (CSEPP) exercise here, but neither is there a desire for such recognition.

The prize sought by participants in the drill is that the roles in which they hone their crisis response skills will never be necessitated into reality.

The on- and off-post training activity focused on a mock plane crash and explosion at the Army’s Pine Bluff Arsenal that disrupted a staged transport of agent-GB filled rockets from the Pine Bluff Chemical Activity storage to the Pine Bluff Chemical Agent Disposal Facility.

PBCDF is charged with safely disposing of the arsenal’s stockpile of rockets, land mines and ton containers, which originally represented 12 percent of the nation’s inventory of chemical munitions.

Sirens and tone-alert radios were activated and voice messages were sounded, informing the public and event participants that the exercise was under way. Off-post players included the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Arkansas Department of Emergency Management, Arkansas Department of Health and Human Services, Jefferson Regional Medical Center and Arkansas, Cleveland, Dallas, Grant, Jefferson, Lincoln, Lonoke, Prairie, Pulaski and Saline counties.

At the arsenal, officials quickly manned the installation’s emergency operations center, assessing the mock incident and determining off-post recommendations. The installation’s health clinic was thrust into full alert, with authorities establishing decontamination procedures for actors possibly “exposed” to chemical agents, treating “victims” and transporting those who needed additional “medical expertise” to JRMC.

The Pine Bluff hospital, where emergency personnel are instructed on aiding patients involved in chemical incidents, had physicians and nurses accepting and caring for arriving “casualties.”

Meanwhile, the Jefferson County Emergency Operations Center, located in the courthouse’s basement, became the off-post administrative headquarters. Representatives of municipal, county, state and federal governments and supporting agencies joined together there and were briefed on the exercise scenario before dramatizing steps they would enact in an actual occurrence.

A half a block away, public affairs experts from the partnering responders reported to and activated the Arkansas Joint Information Center at 123 Main St. The JIC serves as an emergency information clearinghouse for the media, public and affiliate agencies.

By early afternoon, the exercise had concluded.

Players then assembled for a “hot wash,” in which they and teams of evaluators discussed and rated the performance, so that needed improvements could be recognized and integrated into plans for next year’s annual exercise.

“Practice makes perfect,” an old saying goes, but in this theater, ultimate success is a lack of a curtain call beyond a dress rehearsal.

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