Worst Case Scenerio

By Joelyn Hansen

Thursday afternoon I walked away from the 3-day exercise tired, dusty and elated that it was over. And I didn't have to do any manual labor! So, imagine what the others involved felt like.

The scenerio for the exericise was definitely worst-case scenerio. It started out as a routine warrant service at a house with police that escalated into finding a a meth lab and explosives to a partially collapsed house with three victims inside needing rescue. It was a great chance for interagency collaboration as the IFPD, Region 6 Hazmat, the Idaho Falls Regional Bomb Squad, Bonneville County Emergency Management, Idaho State Police, Region 3 Idaho Technical Rescue and Idaho Bureau of Homeland Security.

I was the acting public information officer. Or PIO as it's commonly referred.

When it was all said and done, there were a lot of comments about what went well and what needs to be fixed. The good news is that the majority consensus is that most everything went well.

One of the officers involved said he learned a lot. And I must say I learned a lot too. We have a lot of resources available to us in the event a real emergency occurs (let's pray that it we never have to utilize those resouces!). The second piece of good news is that agencies really do work well together when push comes to shove. And the last lesson learned is that we have some men and women with some great expertise.