Emergency responders across ten counties in eastern Kentucky took part in an annual disaster training exercise organized by the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program Wednesday.
The training simulated the mass decontamination of victims in emergency situations involving chemicals. The Blue Grass Army Depot in Richmond is in the process of destroying secondary chemical waste from its stockpile of VX and GB warheads.
Shane Poynter is battalion chief at the Lexington Fire Department and was on scene at the training at the city’s Jacobson Park.
“You go through individual aspects of the training, the medical, the hazmat, the seeing all that come together into one operation and seeing how we can all work together,” Poynter said. “Even though you have a lot of firefighters on scene today, they're from different platoons and different parts of the city, we all work together to make this run smoothly.”
This year’s training simulated a potential incident involving the depot’s
secondary waste. But Poynter said this sort of training is needed for other situations, too.
“We would continue to prepare for those types of incidents, because we do have chemicals that move through the county via rail and freight traffic on the interstates, and also a lot of our manufacturing in the city use similar types,” Poynter said. “Not weaponized chemicals, but chemicals that would go through the same decon and medical procedures.”
A presentation from the depot earlier this month reported nearly five percent of the GB rocket warheads considered secondary waste have been destroyed.
