Crisis City’ gets test during multistate drill

Everything that could go wrong will go wrong at Crisis City.

A domestic terrorist sets off an explosion on a railroad line, causing a derailment. A propane tank catches fire and explodes into a nearby building, causing it to collapse.

All of it was part of an exercise Tuesday at Crisis City, a training site near the central Kansas town of Salina. The mock city is part of the Great Plains Joint Regional Training Center, which includes the Smoky Hill Range Complex, the Kansas Regional Training Institute, the Kansas Army National Guard Training Center.

The event in Kansas involved state and local officials from Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, along with the National Guard and other federal agencies. It was part of a larger exercise, dubbed Vigilant Guard, that started last week in Iowa.

Despite temperatures that reached about 100 degrees Tuesday, officials said the Salina exercise and the venue met their needs. Maj. Gen. Tod Bunting, Kansas adjutant general and emergency management director, said the weather, bugs and snakes were a good substitute for stress in a real event.

“Events happen on a Friday night when it’s dark,” he said. It’s the kind of training you don’t want to do in the middle of town.”

Maj. Greg Platt of the Kansas National Guard managed the exercise in Salina, which he called “a 600-piece puzzle involving mostly city and county first responders working side by side.

“Many are doing it for the first time in a group effort,” Platt said.

The goal was to identify gaps in preparedness and response, and pass lessons on to others. An unmanned aerial vehicle patrolled above, sending live video and data below.

“Every exercise gets better. Everybody’s learning,” said Maj. Chaz Smith, liaison for the National Guard Bureau in Washington.

Crisis City covers 40 acres and was built by the Kansas Emergency Management Agency near the Smoky Hill Air National Guard Weapons Range, with $9 million in state funds and $30 million in federal. Tuesday’s exercise was the mock city’s first, and construction crews were still pouring asphalt for an observation center.

Platt said the training venue should help state agencies improve collaboration for the next big tornado, such as one that nearly wiped out the southern Kansas town of Greensburg in 2007.

In the coming years, there will be venues at Crisis City for responding to agriculture accidents, a permanent rubble pile, vertical tower, urban village and tanker truck.

“I would have liked to have started a few years ago to be where we are now, given the economics,” said Col. Lee Tafanelli, a member of the Kansas National Guard staff and Republican state representative.

He said the question is: Will the state have enough resources to bring Crisis City to its full capabilities? No state or local agency can afford to do any of the training on its own, he said.

Sen. Jay Emler, a Lindsborg Republican, said the unique opportunities provided at Crisis City could be a way for Kansas to generate revenue by becoming a regional site for other states.

“There’s no doubt we are better. We’re far better at communications,” Emler said.


By John Milburn
June 23, 2009