"Tabletop" exercise discusses local handling of railroad incidents

Allamakee County Emergency Management Coordinator Chris Dahlstrom organized and led a “tabletop” railroad incident exercise at Veterans Memorial Hospital in Waukon Tuesday night, October 27. Representatives from the Iowa Department of Transportation; the Harpers Ferry, Waterville, Lansing, New Albin and Waukon Fire Departments; Veterans Memorial Hospital; the Allamakee County Sheriff’s Department; the Lansing Police Department; Canadian Pacific Railroad; and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources participated in the exercise. All of the participants were asked to provide input on how their organization would respond to an incident involving a train hauling petroleum colliding with a passenger vehicle, resulting in several fatalities and multiple injuries. All the details of the emergency response were discussed, including controlling the resulting fire, triage, transportation and care of victims, control of the incident site, organization at the hospital, law enforcement response, hazardous material containment, media and public information and recovery to “as normal.”
The large group was divided into several groups - hospital, law enforcement, emergency medical services, public information and fire - to discuss specific responses to the incident before reconvening the larger group to discuss specific aspects of the fictional incident. “It was a good exercise,” Dahlstrom said. “The whole goal was to bring all the parties together and brainstorm. It goes to show that our responders have done a lot of training and they know what they’re doing. I think it went well.” Dahlstrom added that a rail car incident response course was held recently in New Albin to teach emergency responders how to assess train car incidents. A full-scale exercise involving more hands-on training in regard to such an incident was initially planned for October 29 this year, but had to be postponed until next year, Dahlstrom reported. Standard photo by Bob Beach.