In and around a sleek, white building at Argonne National Laboratory near Lemont, curious men and women were examining the latest in mobile communications centers, checking out the new solar-powered generator, evaluating software for managing the aftermath of a war of mass destruction. A few stopped by a table-top city destroyed by a natural disaster.
Just another day at the Technology Partnerships for Emergency Management Workshop.
For three days this week, Argonne will play host to about 400 scientists, researchers, vendors, bureaucrats, firefighters, police and others responsible for coordinating recovery efforts after a disaster.
Over the three years of the annual workshop, it has become something of an information fair for the people who visit immediately the sites of floods or fires, earthquakes, tornadoes or terrorist attacks.
It also has strengthened international alliances, such as the one between the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, and EMERCOM, Russia’s version of the disaster-relief agency.
On Tuesday, the first day of the conference, Kay Goss, associate director of FEMA, and Yuri L. Vorobiev, her counterpart at EMERCOM, met for about three hours. The result, among other things, was an informal agreement to stage exercises in which both agencies participate.
That would be the latest in a series of more than 200 projects on which the two agencies have cooperated, Goss said. The two administrators also are talking about establishing an international search-and-rescue training center near Moscow and an Internet-like inventory of resources that can be accessed by communities struck by disasters, even if the Internet is destroyed.
“The general approach of the different countries is the same,” Vorobiev said through a translator, although he said the American organizational approach to responding to disasters is very strong.
“The best aspect of this conference is the possibility to exchange different views,” he added.
In addition to the Russian emergency management agency, similar organizations from Norway and Taiwan are attending the conference.
Beyond the international aspect, the Technology Partnerships for Emergency Management Workshop also provides an update on local communities’ readiness for such a disaster.
“We’ve got some communities that are very prepared, some communities that are moving toward it and some that have got a ways to go,” said Thomas Mefford, coordinator of the DuPage County Office of Emergency Management.
DuPage this year bought a Mobile Operating Center, a recreational vehicle that was converted into a gleaming communications center.
Mefford also noted that in the last two years, DuPage County has adopted a standardized 10-step countywide disaster management system.
