The Fergus Falls Daily Journal

By Tom Hintgen

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Responders get emergency practice

Published 12:00pm Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Making plans on what to do in case of an emergency or catastrophe is well and good, but taking this a step further by coordinating an actual hands-on exercise could very well save lives down the road. The latter scenario was played out by Grant County officials Saturday.

At 8:30 a.m. on July 14 the exercise began when there was a fictional vehicle accident along County Rd. 57 near Ashby that caused the two Magellan Pipelines to begin leaking gasoline and fuel into nearby Pelican Lake. “Rescuing the victims of the accident, containing the leak from the pipeline, evacuating people from the Ashby Resort and Campground, and notifying those on Big Island were just some of the practiced protocols of this exercise,” Grant County Emergency Management spokesperson Tina Lindquist said.

All of Grant County’s fire departments, first responders and EMT’s and the Dalton and Evansville fire departments (Otter Tail and Douglas counties, respectively) participated along with ELEAH Medical, the American Red Cross, Grant County Salvation Army and Ashby School public schools.

Magellan Pipeline and West Central Environmental Consultants, representing private industry, contributed to the drill.

“We learned a lot in all the pre-planning that took place and the exercise went pretty well,” Ashby Fire Chief Jim Risbrudt said.

“We have some work to do on our evacuation protocols, but overall we learned a lot,” Barrett Fire Chief Dave Lein said.

A year ago Grant County participated in a regional exercise in Barrett involving a train derailment. Since then Grant County has been meeting and having discussions regarding other training opportunities.

“The communication and organization of the mobile emergency command center went smoother this time around, and will continue to get better the more we practice,” Hofffman Fire Chief Dennis Satre said.

The Grant County Emergency Management team said it’s important for area communities to know how dedicated fire departments are in keeping area residents safe. Without their cooperation and volunteer time, these trainings would not be possible, the team added.

“The exercise also involved a secondary structure fire which gave the opportunity for us to practice our contingency fire and EMS protection throughout our county,” Lindquist said.