Floods. Earthquakes. Tornadoes, snowstorms, chemical spills and explosions. All have hit Du Page County through the years, with varying effect; in all likelihood, all will hit again. And when they do, the responsibility for dealing with them will fall largely to local government.
In Du Page, plans on exactly what should be done range from finished to barely begun, according to officials.
Smaller-scale emergencies are obviously the easiest to respond to, and a highly organized system is in place for dealing with them. A chemical spill in Westmont last September showed how that system works.
The incident, at the Oakbrook Hills Hotel, started with maintenance personnel who were replacing a damaged piece of equipment that feeds bromine, a chlorine substitute, into a whirlpool. The staff apparently thought the bromine container was empty and discarded it. When the bromine reacted with material inside a trash container, toxic gases were released into a staff kitchen, authorities said.
”When I arrived there were about 25 people standing around a dock area with tears in their eyes,” said Jim Collins, an engine operator with the Westmont Fire Department who was in charge of the operation because both the Westmont fire chief and his assistant were away. It was a role he had practiced regularly.
By the time 61 people had been taken to area hospital for checkups, with only one being admitted, 11 ambulances had been summoned to the scene.
Suburban fire departments are frequently confronted with this kind of situation, which is too big for an individual department to handle. So the call goes out for help from neighboring departments.
Most Chicago-area fire departments belong to the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System, a highly organized system of summoning specific fire, rescue and ambulance units to the scene of a fire or other emergency.
In the Westmont incident, Collins learned from hotel staff what type of chemical was causing the fumes, then summoned the department`s hazardous materials expert to the scene. Dressed in a protective suit, he retrieved the bromine canister and sealed it in a 55-gallon ”containment unit,” Collins said.
Though there were no apparent serious injuries, the need for paramedics to check people`s conditions was apparent, so Collins called on the box-alarm system. The first call, sometimes called a ”1-11” alarm, ”gets three ambulances, a rescue squad and a chief,” Collins said. The dispatching is done from a local headquarters, which for southern Du Page is the Tri-State Fire Protection District in Darien.
He then called in succession a 2-11 alarm, which brought nine ambulances, and a 3-11, which brought a total of 11 ambulances.
The various alarms also set in motion an ”exchange of quarters,” by which fire engines and ambulances from distant stations were sent to some of the fire stations vacated by units sent to the hotel.
At minimum, disaster plans are designed to avoid situations which have 10 men supervising and one man working, as was reported after the recent Armenian earthquake. They also assign responsibilities in as generic a way as possible, but along traditional lines-firefighters fighting fires, policemen controlling traffic and enforcing laws, medical personnel treating the injured, and so on. Du Page County`s plan, called the Comprehensive Emergency Operations Plan, was written in its present form almost two years ago. For the most part it doesn`t prescribe ways of dealing with specific emergencies.
Responsibility for dealing with a disaster lies first with the municipality in which it occurs, or with the county if it hits an
unincorporated area.
As each level of government reaches the limits of its capabilities, it may call on the next higher level for help.
”When the state is contacted, all agencies of the state may be called on to give aid: Transportation, Water Resources, the Environmental Protection Agency or the Department of Nuclear Safety,” said Don Prindle, coordinator of the eight-county Region 5 of the Illinois Emergency Services and Disaster Agency.
At the national level, disaster relief is run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Among other things, FEMA operates the National Disaster Medical System, which is coordinated in the Midwest by the naval hospital at the Great Lakes Naval Air Station in North Chicago.
While the Du Page County plan has established broad outlines of responsibilities, it has some admitted deficiencies.
The area of nuclear hazards is one. The plan says the county is subject to a variety of radiation hazards, including accidents involving trucks or trains carrying nuclear waste, terrorism or outright war.
But the plan says: ”Du Page County currently does not have Radiological Protection System capability. This . . . has been identified as a deficiency which will be corrected as soon as possible.”
The county is also still in the process of compiling a comprehensive listing of all hazardous chemicals stored or used in the county. Up-to-date information of that kind is considered crucial to speedy containment and cleanup of an emergency involving chemicals.
Also awaiting completion is a catalogue of the relief supplies and expertise available to officials in charge of emergency response.
To be included when the list is finished sometime next year are lists of equipment and vehicles, including airplanes, ambulances, boats and buses;
facilities for shelter and other uses; and supplies as diverse as food, drinking water and tire repair, said Thomas Mefferd, assistant director of the Du Page County Emergency Services and Disaster Agency.
Such lists of available facilities have been compiled already by various public and private agencies, including the American Red Cross and municipal disaster officers.
Downers Grove has compiled such an index and keeps it up to date, said the village`s assistant fire chief, Terry Reiter. ”The resource book has names and phone numbers of (persons or companies) who have certain kinds of equipment and have agreed to make it available to us if needed,” Reiter said. The Addison Fire Department is one of 15 Du Page County fire departments that put up the relatively modest sum of about $140 each (plus donations) to buy a trailer and stock it with enough basic medical supplies to set up a field hospital for about 45 patients.
The trailer, called the Mass Casualty Incident Unit, is kept at the Addison Fire Department and contains oxygen tanks, backboards, saline solution for intravenous injection, stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs. It also contains ”triage flags” to identify the location of the field hospital and even a clipboard and forms for recording the paramedic units that have arrived, the names of victims and whether they`re still at the scene or been taken to a hospital.
Addison fire chief Ralph Blust said the trailer and its equipment would be taken to a disaster scene and set up by the first arriving rescue workers. ”An emergency situation has a way of evolving by itself. If additional paramedics are called, they will arrive within minutes, but the situation may nevertheless be in a state of mass confusion when they arrive,” Blust said.
”But with the Mass Casualty Incident Unit, you have everything needed to set up command and organization,” Blust said.
