By Dominik Lobkowicz
Waldoboro Emergency Medical Services Deputy Director Mike Poli (center) discusses a train derailment scenario July 10. Poli is flanked by Dana Dyer (right), an emergency medical technican for Waldoboro, and Robert Wood, assistant EMS director for Warren. (D. Lobkowicz photo) |
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Waldoboro Emergency Management Director Kyle Santheson facilitated a “tabletop” exercise of a train derailment July 11. (D. Lobkowicz photo) |
It’s 4 p.m. on a summer Friday, and a southbound Maine Eastern Railroad passenger train chugs through Waldoboro. After crossing Old Route 1, the train suddenly accelerates, fails to negotiate a turn, and derails, striking the Route 1 overpass near Moody’s Diner.
Initial calls to 911 report the locomotive is on fire, and a number of passengers seen exiting the train appeared to be injured.
This was the scenario that members of Waldoboro’s fire, police, and emergency medical services departments, as well as departments from Warren and Friendship and the Lincoln County Emergency Management Agency, considered during a “tabletop” emergency exercise the evening of July 10.
The exercise, facilitated by Waldoboro Emergency Management Director Kyle Santheson, focused on three primary objects of on-site incident management and coordination, triage and prehospital treatment of injured persons, and security of the scene.
Emergency personnel were presented with two areas of discussion: determining their response in the first 15 minutes after the report of derailment, and their response within the first two hours.
Broken out into their various categories of law enforcement, fire services, and EMS, the groups worked through the priorities specific to them, such as traffic control and scene security for the police, triage for EMS, and addressing the burning locomotive for the fire departments.
Much of the conversations and plans focused on resources – both determining what was needed by those on the scene and figuring out where those resources would comewreckservices departments, as well as departments from Warren and Friendship and the Lincoln County Emergency Management Agency, considered during a “tabletop” emergency exercise the evening of July 10.
The exercise, facilitated by Waldoboro Emergency Management Director Kyle Santheson, focused on three primary objects of on-site incident management and coordination, triage and prehospital treatment of injured persons, and security of the scene.
Emergency personnel were presented with two areas of discussion: determining their response in the first 15 minutes after the report of derailment, and their response within the first two hours.
Broken out into their various categories of law enforcement, fire services, and EMS, the groups worked through the priorities specific to them, such as traffic control and scene security for the police, triage for EMS, and addressing the burning locomotive for the fire departments.
Much of the conversations and plans focused on resources – both determining what was needed by those on the scene and figuring out where those resources would come from by higher-ups in the chain of command.
“Police did a real good job with the traffic control and realizing how quickly they ran out of resources,” Santheson said July 11, pointing out the difficulty in shutting down long stretches of a major road such as Route 1 with only two units on duty.
The incident would have also required a large draw from ambulance services around the Midcoast, with 24 of the 157 train passengers injured in one form or another.
Not only would the incident have drawn many area ambulances to Waldoboro, but ambulances from still further out would have had to provide mutual aid to cover the towns and services sending trucks to the train wreck, officials said.
Certain things relevant to an actual emergency still did not come into play during the discussions, such as coordinating communications channels for the personnel and various relevant locations at and around the scene, but such aspects may be the focus of future exercises, according to Santheson.
The exercise “could have gone 10 hours last night if we wanted it to, there were so many facets and so many things that we didn’t talk about,” he said July 11.
In the second half of the exercise, EMS Director Richard Lash, Fire Chief Paul Smeltzer, and Police Chief Bill Labombarde stepped away from their agencies to form a unified command and work with Santheson and Selectmen Ronald Miller and Jann Minzy.
At this point, 15 minutes into the response, the fire is supposed to be out and EMS would be providing initial triage to the injured, but in some ways the size of the incident would be continuing to grow.
More and more emergency responders would be arriving and need a place to stage; LifeFlight would likely need landing zones in the area; and with the potential of deployment here for hours, days, or weeks, the chiefs, selectmen, and EMA officials had to start considering how to get food, facilities, and rest for those on the scene – and how to pay for it all.
“Those are the sorts of things the leadership core of the town need to be thinking about,” Santheson said. “We have a workforce to manage.”
The overarching objective for the drill was to get the various players to see they need to communicate and work together and be able to recognize when that needs to happen, Santheson said July 11.
“It’s not just an accident or a structure fire, [or] an EMS scene where we have all our separate things to do,” and responders need to be looking at the resulting repercussions of their decisions, Santheson said. “That’s what I thought was good: people were thinking and gears were turning.”
Santheson recalled an incident where such learning occurred outside of a classroom setting – a fatal accident on Ralph’s Hill a few winters ago where the decision was made to shut down Route 1 from East Pond Road to Route 32 and reroute traffic.
It was about 45 minutes later they got a call from the Department of Public Works reporting tractor-trailers jackknifed on North Nobleboro Road and other vehicles that couldn’t make the hills.
“Because of our decision, because we didn’t involve everybody in our decision, we ended up creating more of a mess than if we’d just let traffic continue,” Santheson said.
Afterward, the service chiefs and Public Works Director John Daigle all met to discuss how to handle such a shutdown, and just a week later there was another accident that again necessitated shutting down Route 1.
“We called Johnny, he said ‘No problem, give me 10 minutes,'” Santheson said. Daigle brought in his crew to sand, traffic was held until the roads were ready, and there were no problems, Santheson said.
Waldoboro typically holds one tabletop exercise a year, and participates in mutual aid drills with other towns, Santheson said. The next exercise, a “limited full-scale” scenario hoped to involve an actual train, is planned for this fall.
