By Joseph Robertia
Photos by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. Paris Davis and Javon Pamplin, both of Nikiski, entertained themselves with electronic devices they brought from home during their stay at a mock emergency shelter established at Soldotna Middle School on Saturday evening during the Alaska Shield 2012 emergency preparedness drill.
Redoubt Reporter
In a way, an Alaska winter can be like a clever but vicious dog. It may not try to bite when you expect it, but let your guard down and it will come for you. Knowing this can be lifesaving, which is why the Kenai Peninsula Borough took part in a statewide exercise, the Alaska Shield 2012 scenario, over the weekend to be prepared for a real-life, extreme, cold-weather emergency.
The central peninsula’s hypothetical emergency scenario involved Enstar losing gas pressure due to a “water slug” found in the substation valves for the Soldotna and Sterling distribution system, which would cause residents to go without gas service for several days.
“The scenario is that it’s an extended outage, it’s 20 below and everyone with natural gas has to shut it off — house by house and business by business — so the line can be purged and then it can be turned back on,” said Glenda Landua, with the borough’s Office of Emergency Management.
The scenario is a two-fold test, part of which involved the coordination of OEM’s operations, logistics and planning with other local, state and federal emergency-response organizations, as well as the dissemination of public information about the emergency. The other part of the scenario tested the borough’s ability to shelter large numbers of residents displaced by the lack of natural gas.
“We don’t know what the exact number of people would be who don’t have backup heat sources, like wood stoves, fireplaces, etc, but we’d guess it’s a fair number,” Landua said.
The borough OEM served as the central command center, while Soldotna
Gordon Merrill, Gary Hindman, Linda Hindman, Josh Lister, Dagmar Mayer and Stacy Lister played cards to pass the time they spent in the shelter during the mock emergency.
Middle School served as a shelter location. According to Brenda Ahlberg, the public information officer for the exercise, all emphasis was on making the mock emergency seem as real as possible.
“The importance behind the exercise is the training and what we learn from it, and the relationships between agencies that will be built that will help us in a real-world scenario, so we want this to be as real as possible,” she said.
To add elements of realism, while the OEM attempted to serve as liaisons with and for Enstar to keep the public informed, volunteers serving as actors injected themselves into the scenario in various ways. Some came to the OEM office to demand information on when the emergency would be resolved, and drama students from Nikiski High School called in to flood the phone lines with concerned calls.
At the Soldotna Middle School shelter, volunteers also served to make the
Kim Christianson, a Kenai Peninsula School District employee, serves pizza as part of the dinner Saturday night for those who stayed at the shelter at Soldotna Middle School.
situation more challenging. Some volunteers arrived in wheelchairs to test the shelter’s ability to serve those with special needs, while others feigned medical illnesses so severe they needed transport to the hospital.
“In a real emergency, you have to be ready to accommodate everyone, from dialysis patients to pregnant women to people needing oxygen to people with mental health issues. These are very real scenarios and you have to be prepared for them all,” said Frank Keener, the Red Cross shelter manager who oversaw the shelter’s operations.
Keener, along with 12 other emergency response personnel, accommodated 41 live people for the scenario, as well as another 40 simulated people. Simulated pets were kept outside in a separate facility. This may have sounded like a handful, but Keener, who has worked real emergencies all across the U.S., said the Soldotna scenario was quite simple compared to other disasters where he’s provided assistance.
“I’ve done this since 2005, and I’ve had shelters as small as 25 to 30 people, and I’ve had shelters with as many as 2,200 people in them. In that time, I’ve had shelters with homeless people with alcohol and drug addictions and nowhere else to go, and I’ve had millionaires who lost everything to a hurricane,” Keener said. “That’s what I look at as the most challenging part of this. It’s trying to be able to handle all the individual people and all their individual problems.”
While Keener may have worked much larger and more-serious events, he said scenarios such as this past weekend were quite valuable due to what is gleaned from them.
“Live drills like this are the only way to learn. I’ve been to classes and read books about what to do, but once you’re in a shelter it’s a whole different ballgame,” he said. “Also, I’ve never been to two disasters that were alike, so the more you practice like this, the better prepared you’ll be for whatever comes up.”
Like Keener, Donna Endresen, one of the assistant shelter managers, has helped staff real emergency shelters during her 36 years in the Army. Now retired, she volunteers her services.
“This is my first drill as a civilian, and while it’s smaller than I’m used to — there’s not 1,000 beds or anything — I’d say it’s pretty well thought out with a good level of organization,” Endresen said.
Endresen’s role was to oversee everyone who checked into the shelter.
“Good logistics are important. We need to have an emergency contact in case
Frank Keener, Red Cross shelter manager, and Donna Endresen, assistant manger, ensure that everyone who checked into the shelter is accounted for.
something happened to someone while they’re here. It’s a way to keep track of minors and who they’re here with, and to find the owners of pets being kept outside,” she said.
While there were no real pets for the scenario, people bringing pets to a shelter is a real possibility, so outside the school a heated, 20-by-20-foot shelter complex was erected.
“For this drill it’s being used for pets, but this is also for remote sheltering if needed,” said Mickey Sopkowik, a member of the borough Community Emergency Response Team. “This facility could also be used as a field hospital if needed, complete with rolling beds. This facility could also be used to host firefighters during a wildfire, and it has bladders for showers and other hygiene needs.”
While the need for such a shelter would certainly mean roughing it, those who volunteered as victims in the school shelter found it far from an unenjoyable experience. Cots with yellow, polyfoam blankets and plastic bags with necessities, such as toothpaste, wet wipes and a trash bag, were provided, but most in attendance brought pillows, sleeping bags, games and electronic devices to pass the time. Some volunteer victims said they viewed it as a community slumber party.
“This is our kind of camping,” said Darlene Nealey, of Soldotna, who came with several family members of various ages.
Nealey’s teenage niece, Paris Davis, used her phone to text the outside world while in the shelter, while her companion, Javon Pamplin, played video games on his iPad.
“We brought our own entertainment,” Davis said.
While the teenagers occupied themselves, the older Nealey said there was a purpose to them being there, beyond assisting with the scenario.
“We have assisted-living homes in Soldotna and Nikiski, so we wanted to come and learn about disaster preparedness as an education for us. For the average person, they just have to worry about themselves, but we have to have things packed and ready for all our residents,” she said.
Brandy Pamplin, of Nikiski, said she, too, came to learn from the scenario, but also to build relationships during a real time of need.
“On the peninsula there’s one road in and one road out, so we could be cut off in a disaster,” she said. “If that happens, we’d just have our community to rely on. We’d just have each other to depend on.”
