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Long beach City Hall “Simulated” Anthrax Incident Evacuation Drill
By frhayes | September 4, 2008
On Thursday, September 4, 2008, the Long Beach City Hall facility conducted their yearly evacuation drill with an extra-added complication. This year’s scenario a “simulated” anthrax incident provided employees and first responders with challenges that they had not been presented with in the past.
The drill began with the discovery of a package containing an unknown type white powdery substance in City Hall, which triggered employees to initiate an evacuation of the building, in coordination with calling the Fire and Police departments to respond for assistance.
The Fire and Police departments responded the appropriate resources for this “simulated” incident and set up a unified command post, including the City Safety Officers to coordinate an orderly evacuation, and to formulate a plan to address the presence, and possible exposure of employees to a hazardous material (Anthrax).
Fire department members assisted with the evacuation of employees down both stairwells who where ambulatory, and used specialized equipment to assist employees who could not self evacuate down the stairwells. Police department personnel assisted with securing the area, assisting with evacuations at ground level, and simulated contacting partnering agencies that would be involved in a “real” anthrax incident, and started the investigation process.
This incident also provided the new LBFD hazardous material team with the opportunity in which to utilize some of their detection equipment, personnel protective suits, and perform a simulated decontamination process on two city hall employees.
Overall this drill was a success, and provided employees with the reminder that in the event of a real emergency knowing how to evacuate the building is a very important procedure to know how to complete in a timely, and efficient manner. The drill also gave the members of the unified command (Fire, Police, and City Hall personnel) the ability to communicate, plan, utilize all of the resources to the best of their ability, and to strengthen relationships between all involved.
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