Building 'burns' in planning exercise

Red Cross volunteers and staffers, with help from other agencies, turned Big Sky Manor into a towering inferno Wednesday - but their intentions were good.

It was a tabletop exercise aimed at finding the roadblocks in a volunteer response to a significant catastrophe. As the scenario got rolling, participants pondered questions ranging from where to shelter suddenly homeless seniors to how to deal with reporters.

Volunteer Jack Crandall, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, came up with the idea. Though he left the Army in 1979, he continues to put on leadership-training exercises as a consultant to the military.

"This exercise, as far as I know, is the first Red-Cross sponsored joint city-county exercise of its type," Crandall told the group.

Although it was a bright May day outside, it was a cold winter evening inside the Flathead Electric Cooperative building as Crandall set the scene. He explained that the Red Cross actually started this planning effort last December.

At that time, the group realized it needed to bring in other agencies to iron out coordination issues.

"It was apparent to us that we didn't operate in a vacuum," Crandall said. "This is a follow-up to the December event."

Participants included Kalispell police and fire, Flathead City-County Health Department, the Salvation Army, media representatives and Red Cross volunteers and staff.

Crandall revisited the scenario to get ideas flowing.

"This thing got started at 8:30 in the evening in December," he said. "We're going to assume we got them (the seniors) all out."

About 90 elderly, some escaping only with their night clothes, were rescued from the fire which began on the ground floor of the senior housing complex on Second Avenue West in Kalispell.

Police representative Lt. Jim Brenden explained that police would first confirm the fire to dispatch and then coordinate with fire units. Officers immediately set up a perimeter, allowing only police and fire personnel near the building.

Officers then defined an external perimeter to keep bystanders and local media out of the mix of responders. Between the two perimeters, a control zone allowed in medical and other emergency people as needed.

An incident-command center formed almost immediately.

"Typically, that's in the control zone," Brenden said.

As soon as seniors escaped or were rescued, a call went out to the Red Cross to take charge of those gathered outside on the frigid December night.

Based on the planning carried out Wednesday, volunteers rushed to the scene with blankets for the seniors without coats. Next, they set up a triage area in Sykes' Grocery & Market next door to Big Sky Manor.

Once out of the cold in Sykes', the seniors were separated into groups who needed transport to the hospital and those who needed to go to an emergency shelter. For purposes of the exercise, the conference rooms at the WestCoast Hotel at Kalispell Center Mall served as the shelter.

During discussions Wednesday, participants decided that holiday activities at the hotel made that an impractical choice. Alternatives from the Eagles Hall to the new armory on U.S. 93 north were discussed as better options.

At about the same time as the Red Cross was notified, Jim Atkinson, director of the Agency on Aging, was called to round up drivers and heated buses to shuttle the elderly to the shelter.

Gayle Wilhelm, service area director of the Red Cross, said volunteers could set up cots and other materials within an hour and a half to accept up to 100 people in the emergency shelter.

At the same location, public information Red Cross workers arrive with computers and other supplies to operate the phone lines to inform families of the location of survivors of the fire.

According to a Red Cross official from Missoula, only 8 to 10 percent of the people affected by the fire end up living at the shelter. But according to Wilhelm, the agency has learned to err on the side of planning for too many.

"We say order big, you can always cancel," she said.

The group continued to hammer out details from getting snacks for seniors with diabetes to erecting signs to show buses where to drop off those who were evacuated. Wheelchairs and walker sources such as Stoick Drug and North Valley Hospital were discussed.

They made plans to order medications, take care of pets and tap the Salvation Army for help with meals and trucks to get materials moved to the shelter.

After considering the dizzying array of details, the group identified missing ingredients like a van for Red Cross volunteers and mobile radios in case a disaster knocks out cell-phone towers.

Near the end of the exercise, Crandall discussed the need for liaison representatives from every agency to work together. He said every disaster experiences some lack of coordination where items needed one place end up somewhere else.

It was the reason for forming the joint exercise Wednesday.

"Information needs to flow back and forth," Crandall said.

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.