Multiple agencies come together for United drill
An uncontrolled propane leak at United Refining Company is a pretty big deal.
A big enough deal to warrant a multi-agency drill on Wednesday morning.
According to Mike McCluskey, Fire Chief and Emergency Response Officer at United, the drill was “something we’ve been trying to schedule for a while.” We, in this case, is McCluskey and City of Warren Fire Chief Sam Pascuzzi. It’s also something “we’d like to do more of,” said McCluskey.
The drill called in personnel from Warren County Public Safety, Emergycare, City of Warren Fire and Police, and crews from United. Simulated for the drill were the presence of numerous other agencies, including PEMA, Pleasant Township VFD in addition of multiple other VFDs in the region, PennDOT, the Sheriff’s Office, the Transit Authority, and the American Red Cross.
At 10:30 a.m., said Deputy Public Safety Director Scott Rose, a simulated report of an uncontrolled propane leak was “called in” by Tony Gigliotti, Incident Commander for United. Gigliotti reported the incident to McCorrison who represented communications, who then reported the incident to Pascuzzi. The way it works, Rose said, is that Gigliotti would work directly with Pascuzzi in the event of a real emergency. Gigliotti’s role would be to report the ongoing situation to Pascuzzi and to manage operations and response inside the plant, while Pascuzzi would be tasked with taking information from Gigliotti and using it to continually decide which resources to call in, how to allocate them, and what the response should be on the part of fire and rescue personnel. Information like the number of people injured, their exposure to hazardous materials, where fire and EMS can and should enter the facility from, and how to coordinate the interface between internal and external response teams are all issues that would need to be worked out on the fly, explained McCluskey.
With that information, Pascuzzi would need to decide whether or not to evacuate the area, what law enforcement personnel should respond and what their role in managing public comings and goings, including evacuation, should be, and how to coordinate the mass exodus of a one mile or more radius of employees, residents, business owners, and others while still engineering emergency personnel’s response to the changing situation.
It’s a big, overwhelming job for everyone.
And, said Rose, being able to simulate it in a controlled environment makes it that much easier to do at, say, 3 a.m. when there is no plan for how the incident unfolds and the inevitable chaos of the situation threatens to throw everyone off.
Wednesday’s simulation only lasted an hour, but even that one hour time frame was difficult and expensive – in terms of plant productivity and emergency personnel availability – to coordinate, said McCluskey. Still, what was learned was valuable, and it was clear to him that more simulations and drills are necessary.
“Communications,” said McCluskey, “is always a problem. Always.” Wednesday’s communications snags were numerous, both technically and interpersonally. What was learned, as was discussed in a briefing afterward, was that increasing United staffs awareness of emergency personnel’s unique perspective and response to such a situation, and vice versa, needs improvement. Police tasked with blocking traffic and evacuating an area, said City of Warren Police Sergeant Joseph Sproveri, may not be able to get United staff in and out of the area as quickly as they would like or be accustomed to. Simple tips to United employees like having a badge out and ready, and knowing how to communicate efficiently with police in an emergency would be helpful.
Pascuzzi had several insights during the briefing. “We should do these kinds of things more often,” Pascuzzi agreed with McCluskey. Things like the United incident officer and the emergency response commander knowing one another’s chain of command, said Pascuzzi, would be an area for improvement. “In a real incident, Tony (Gigliotti) and I aren’t going to be face to face, and it’s going to make things harder,” said Pascuzzi. “Doing what we did today helps to make things easier later.”
But just practicing doesn’t do enough, and to that end, United invited Lt. Brian Bost, Firefighter Guido Girimonti, and Fire Chief Richard Wilson of the Allegheny County Airport Authority to evaluate the drill and offer feedback. As Wilson said during the briefing after the drill, an incident at the ACAA and at URC can have similar implications in terms of cost, safety, and productivity. While they will take what they saw back to Allegheny County with them before making a full evaluation report, Wilson said, initial impressions for Bost, Girimonti, and Wilson were all positive. “The things that we saw were good,” said Wilson. Girimonti added, “the tactics I saw, they were spot on.”
“You have these exercises to find the gaps in the system,” said Wilson. “You all know what you’re supposed to do and you’re doing it. It’s just a matter of getting everyone together. On the same page.”
Going forward, said McCluskey, the plan is to wait for the official evaluation and go forward from there, but the general consensus seemed to be that more simulations and even just more tabletop exercises are in order.
“This was a good thing,” said McCluskey.
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