Macomb County: Officials Plan for Disasters by Simulating Real Emergencies in Michigan

May 12, 2005
Would county police and fire officials know how to respond if terrorists seized a local school, the way they did in Russia?

If a terrorist attack left thousands of people ill, how would Macomb government distribute medicine?

Would county police and fire officials know how to respond if terrorists seized a local school, the way they did in Russia?

Both questions are on the table this month as the county quietly continues to work on homeland security.

"Despite the fact a lot of people have taken liberties with trashing homeland security, there are a lot of things we have done proactively to prepare ourselves in the event that something happens," said Lou Mioduszewski, emergency management director for Macomb County. "People don't realize there are an infinite amount of things that could potentially happen to us that could be used as a terrorist attack."

The county's office of emergency management will see a shift this year in the way it plans and the way it spends money.

Vicki Wolber, the county's assistant emergency management director, attended the state homeland security conference in Grand Rapids last week. She was there specifically for discussions about the lessons learned from the seizing of a school in Beslan, Russia, last year. The county is planning to conduct an exercise in September involving simulated terrorist attacks on five high schools.

All seven SWAT teams in the county are expected to be involved, Wolber said, and the conference addressed ways to handle such an attack.

County officials have learned in recent years that simplicity and clarity in planning is important. Up to 10,000 people are involved in a single large-scale disaster exercise in the county, and even more could be needed in the event of a real disaster.

So the county streamlined its planning, adopting strategies that can be adapted to a number of situations.

"We went away from specific plans to an all-hazard approach," Wolber said. "A lot of planning techniques and responses are the same, whether it's a terrorist attack or a tornado. It makes it much easier to pull out one plan you know well."

And today, the County Commission's Health Services Committee will hear a presentation on one of those plans -- a system to dispense medication to a wide population, like getting antibiotics out after an anthrax attack.

Mioduszewski said the type of planning done by the county will change this year. In previous years, the county didn't have to concern itself with Warren, Clinton Township, Sterling Heights and Fraser because they have their own emergency management programs. But with the next round of funding, the county has to take a more regional approach to homeland security.

A planning committee will help determine how and where an expected $3.1 million in funding will be spent, but some of it will likely be used to help implement an 800-MHz emergency radio system for fire and police departments in the county.

The standardized system would enable fire, police and emergency management departments from different jurisdictions to talk to each other.

"If they can't communicate, we'll all be in trouble," Mioduszewski said.

Distributed by the Associated Press

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