Emergency Planning, Frying Pan to Fire

The worst case looked like 90 percent of the city without power, flooding, bridges washing out, houses burning, and no relief in sight for six or eight weeks.

"It could be worse," said Paul Estefan, the emergency preparedness director for Danbury, who ran a bad to worse scenerio in Danbury last week. The workshop took place in the city's , which is where city workers from numerous departments gather in an emergency. State emergency managment personnel kept sending "injects" into the mix, making it harder. "These were all good things to talk about."

In one "inject" the city faced a flood of 25,000 gallons of sewage pouring down a street. What should the city do?

David Day, superintendent of public utilities was in the scenerio, and he said the city has a plan for that. First, workers go check the situation. Is it a blockage from debris, roots or "FOG" (fats, oil, grease?) Is it a combination of that plus flooding? Can the sewer jet truck blow it open? Can the sewage be captured and collected for proper disposal? Did it already flow back into a storm drain?

A second "inject" was a burning building that was surrounded by water six to eight feet deep, and the building was near other buildings.

Fire Chief Geoffrey Herald said in that kind of situation, the first thing the department would do is send a boat to the house to make sure no one is in the house or in any of the neighboring houses. Once the people are safe, firefighters would try to contain the incident to the single house, but they would probably let it burn. They're not going to put firefighters in danger to save a house. The first priority is life, the second priority is containing the problem and the third goal is protecting property.

Herald said he learned something in another "inject" which called for evacuating elderly from a high-rise apartment building. After the exercise, Fire Marshal Jimmy Johnson suggested to Herald that the fire marshal's office be included in such an evacuation, because the firefighters would have their hands full helping people evacuate. A fire marshal on scene would be able to make sure the building met fire code.

"Fire marshals think differently than the supressor folks," Herald said.

Estefan said Danbury and a lot of Connecticut towns have good experience handling storms and power outages. He said this exercise gave city workers a chance to look at other more unusual problems.

"Everybody is talking and asking questions. It's a team that works together," Estefan said. During the scenerio, every chair in the Emergency Operations Center was occupied by someone from various city departments and agencies.