A disaster exercise was hosted by the town of Mancos, Montezuma County Office of Emergency Management, the Southwest Incident Management Team and other local first responders to assess rescue team preparedness and practice an emergency scenario. The exercise took place this past weekend.
This scenario was created to “simulate the consequences of an impending failure” of the Jackson Gulch Dam above Mancos, on Road N.
“The county is very aware that there is a hazard there, that if something should ever happen to that dam, that does strand people on the other side,” Vicki Shaffer, Montezuma County PIO, told The Journal.
The exercise started with a training and briefing on Friday afternoon, followed by an all-day exercise on Saturday. The “after-action” review” was held on Sunday morning.
The incident post command was held at the Mancos Fire Station, with teams spread out along the dam and the path the water would follow, should the dam fail.
“Our scenario was that someone had discovered cracks along the top of the dam and piping in the interior,” Shaffer said. “The exercise was designed to exercise the county’s ability to respond to that type of situation. Some of the objectives for the exercise were to work with the emergency support functions partners, such as the water district up there, the Bureau of Reclamation that manage the dam, the town of Mancos, Mancos Marshal’s Office, State Patrol, C-DOT and the regular people who came to play.”
Southwest Health System’s EMS, Civil Air Patrol, Montezuma County Search and Rescue and Classic Air Medical helicopter also were involved. Mancos Mayor Cindy Simpson and some of the trustees from the town board participated as well.
“We invited and utilized as many partners as we could throughout the area,” Shaffer said. “We had an incredible turnout.”
There were over 60 people in the Emergency Operations Center, and Shaffer said that doesn’t include the Civil Air Patrol pilot, observers, helicopter crew and other partners who joined remotely. Cortez City Manager Drew Saunders flew the Civil Air Patrol plane.
Some “regular citizens” participated as actors who “pretended to be distraught” because they wanted to go “back to their homes.”
“They read the riot act to some of our participants, which was kind of fun. Then we involved some of our community emergency response team,” Shaffer said. “Two of them were sisters that had to be rescued and flown out of the area, and they both got to take a quick ride on Classic Air.”
Before the event officially commenced, an alert was sent via the county’s emergency alert system to let citizens know the exercise was taking place and that there wasn’t an actual emergency.
Shaffer said the law enforcement agencies, participating crews and the mayor were all pleased with how the exercise went.
“I believe that especially the officials from Mancos were really pleased,” Shaffer said. “The Marshal’s Office had very favorable comments on how he thought it went.”
One of the objectives Shaffer mentioned was “the ability to respond to an incident within an incident.” Their extra “incident” was based on the pet kangaroos who escaped in Durango last week.
“We just kind of made it part of our scenario. In our scenario, the Mancos town marshal was injured while trying to wrangle one of the kangaroos. So, the ability to pull resources from the ‘evacuations’ that we had going on and pull people away from that to go handle the second incident. … It was really quick,” Shaffer said. “Everybody responded like they were supposed to, except for the giggling a little bit because it was kind of funny.”
Though Shaffer described the plan put in place during the exercise as “solid,” she emphasized the importance of county residents signing up for the emergency alert notification system.
Right now, only about 2,600 people are signed up for the entire county.
“It’s not near enough,” Shaffer said. “In an instance like that, where we’re needing to evacuate an entire community, that’s the fastest way to do it, to be able to alert them on their phones. We do have the sheriff’s office who would go door to door, but that’s the fastest way for people to get notified.”
The Journal attempted to contact Simpson and Mancos Marshal Justen Goodall for comments about the exercise, but did not receive a response.
