Blasting Away Complacency

Polytechnic campus hosts emergency management drill

It’s not often that a disaster starts on time, but at precisely 9 a.m. on Jan. 11, a drill simulating the effects of a radioactive “dirty bomb” ignited on the ASU Polytechnic campus with a flash of light and clouds of dense blue-gray smoke.

The drill was part of an exercise for the students in Professor Danny Peterson’s emergency management classes. The emergency management curriculum is a component of the College of Technology and Applied Science’s Environmental Technology Management program. Alumni of the program have served in a variety of disaster situations, from Hurricane Katrina to the December 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

This year’s scenario featured two disgruntled “students” (played by students in the program who also were assessed and treated for simulated “injuries”) attempting to explode the dirty bomb at the Alternate State Emergency Operations Center building on campus, as part of a terroristic statement against government involvement in academic life.

Authorities responding to the drill included several nearby fire and police departments, a hazardous materials unit, a crew from the Southwest Ambulance service, and the Arizona Air National Guard. According to Peterson, since many of the emergency management program graduates will work in positions behind the “front lines” of a disaster, the drill was important because it allowed them to see first responders in action, and it also gave them a taste of what those in the field are facing in the first moments of an emergency situation. The drills also augment the standard training regimens of police and fire departments with Peterson’s self-described “more exotic” scenarios, which have included simulated plane crashes, boiler explosions and industrial accidents during the decade he has been running the drills.

The drill and subsequent debriefing session capped off several days of in-town meetings for graduate-level emergency management students, many of whom work for government entities around the United States and attend via the program’s online option. Cindy Thompson, a masters-level student in the emergency management program and an instructor at the fire science academy at the University of Nevada, said that she had participated in many drills in her 24 years as a fire fighter and fire educator, but “nothing was as elaborate as this...it was much more comprehensive than anything I’ve done.”

For more information on the ETM program, or the unit’s alumni chapter, visit http://etmonline.asu.edu.

— By Liz Massey

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Photo: David Michael Peterman

First responders check on a participant in the Jan. 11 disaster drill held on ASU’s Polytechnic campus.

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