A disaster is coming to Indian Creek High School.
A Nineveh-Hensley-Jackson school bus full of students will hit a farm truck pulling tanks with hazardous chemicals. People might die or be injured. Parents will try to reunite with their students.
The drill — which will look real and involve student actors — is happening Tuesday morning on the school campus.
Johnson County’s Local Emergency Planning Committee has planned the training scenario that is meant to test first responders, county agencies and school officials.
How the agencies react will be studied as a way to make sure the people who respond to emergencies are prepared if an emergency situation hits the county.
The committee and exercise are needed because the county is home to businesses that have hazardous chemicals, Johnson County Emergency Management Department Director Stephanie Sichting said.
A fee that businesses pay in order to store or use chemicals is filtered back to the county for emergency training. A consultant has been hired for $12,000 to the scenario. The committee received a state grant that covers all but $2,000 of the consultant’s cost, Sichting said.
Committee members worked through this scenario last year on paper. This year, the scenario is going live.
"It will be realistic," Sichting said. "We decided that since we did the table top last year, that we wanted to expand on it."
The state requires the committee to test their communications and strategies during a disaster periodically. A representative from the state will be at the scenario to evaluate, she said.
Departments involved will see the scenario unfold as if it is really happening. A 911 call will initiate the action. Then, agencies involved would be triggered by the emergency operations center and each department will do what they have been assigned and trained to do in an emergency, said Betsy Swearingen, Johnson County Health Department director.
About 25 Indian Creek high school and middle school students have been recruited to act as students who have been injured or died in the scenario. Bus drivers will also watch the disaster unfold to learn from their perspective as well, said Andy Cline, assistant superintendent for Nineveh-Hensley-Jackson Schools.
The scenario will also test some of the school’s systems, such as the reunification of students and their parents after a disaster. Parents of elementary-aged students will be involved in the scenario by looking for a stuffed animal bearing their child’s name after the disaster, so as not to interrupt the school day for those students, Cline said.
First responders from Trafalgar fire and police, the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, Greenwood’s haz-mat team, the Johnson County Health Department and Nineveh Fire will be a part of the scenario.
Indian Creek was chosen because it is not within easy access to some of the first responders who will be involved in the scenario, Cline said.
"We wanted to see what it would look like and how it might proceed," he said.
Each agency involved has their own checklist for what would need to be done in the case of an emergency and those systems will be tested, Swearingen said.
“If you don’t exercise on it, when a disaster happens, you wont be prepared," she said.
Trafalgar residents are being told about the scenario ahead of time so they will not be alarmed. The scenario will run from 9 to 11:30 a.m. Tuesday.
