City passes disaster exercise with flying colors
BY PHIL REYNOLDS SOUTH JETTY REPORTER

After the man crashed his pickup truck into city hall, causing a fire, and another man used a small plane to spread poison along the beach before wrecking the plane, things started to quiet down.

Wednesday, April 16, was a busy day for the city workers taking part in a disaster exercise in the city council chamber.

Despite the pressure, however, City Manager Michael Kovacs said everyone did well.

"We threw some pretty off-the-wall things at them," Kovacs said. "They knew when to call for help and how much help to call for, and when to send them home again."

Police officers, firefighters and other emergency workers were part of the exercise. Other city employees participated during part of the day-long practice, including Mayor Claude Brown, who took part by phone. Brown, as mayor, is the city's designated emergency management officer.

The practice session was what Kovacs called a "tabletop exercise," meaning people didn't actually go to the beach and firfi.ghters weren't actually called to city hall. It was designed more to learn whether responders know what to do in case of an emergency.

Kovacs said they do.

That made it unlike an exercise in January of last year, when a plane went out of control at Mustang Beach Airport and hit a fuel tank, starting a fire. Emergency Medical Service workers and police responded to that incident at the airport just as though it had been a real disaster.

Obviously overwhelmed on April 16, the participants called for help from neighboring communities, who were also in on the practice. The procedure was monitored from a regional emergency operations headquarters in Corpus Christi.

Kovacs said state emergency planning laws require the city to stage exercises like last week's at intervals to make sure everyone is up to date on how to handle them.

The next one will be a regional exercise run by state officials and involving several area communities, he said.