Midwest Generation Emergency Drill 'Won't Happen Again:' Plant

ROMEOVILLE, IL — Around 4 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 5, sirens and calls for evacuation went off at the Midwest Generation power station on 135th Street, near the Romeoville-Bolingbrook border. The alarming noise carried far enough that nearby residents from both towns were able to clearly hear it. It caused enough concern that just before 5 p.m., the Village of Romeoville put out the following message on its Facebook page:

"The Village of Romeoville has just been informed that Midwest Generation (along 135th Street near Citgo) was recently completing an unannounced fire drill for their employees. During the fire drill, their sirens were set off and announced 'evacuation.' This was only a drill there is no danger or need to evacuate."

The village called the drill "unannounced" because no local police or emergency response authority was notified beforehand that it was taking place. According to one source in the Romeoville PD who wished their name kept off the record, this caused some internal concern and confusion. MG Station Operations Manager Brad Castle said that the drill itself was routine - an annual and necessary check of the station's safety systems - but acknowledged that not alerting local authorities was a mistake.

"We should have notified the 911 dispatcher, which failed to happen... It was an oversight on the person who ran the drill," Castle said. "We don't call the police, what we do is we call a place called Wescom, which is an emergency dispatcher. That's what should have happened."

Romeoville Police Deputy Chief Ken Kroll said his department, on its end, would be taking steps to communicate more effectively with the company in the future.

"We spoke to them [Thursday] and established that we're going to have a seven-days-a-week, 24-hour contact with them going forward," Kroll said.

This is not the first time concerns over energy-production safety have surfaced in Romeoville. Older residents likely remember the 1984 Romeoville petroleum refinery disaster, and understand why loud, unannounced sirens calling for people to evacuate can be jarring. Castle said station personnel will take measures to ensure a similar lapse in communication does not occur again.

"We'll address it... the page [about notifying emergency dispatchers] was buried, [the drill procedure] is about a 50-page document, we're going to move it up to the front," he said. "People make mistakes, and you come up with a way to correct it."