In light of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, cities, counties and states all across the U.S. are re-evaluating their emergency plans.

Kosciusko County is no different.

County officials first developed an emergency plan in 1988.

"That was mandated by the government, to do a SARA Title 3 program," said county administrator Ron Robinson. "That was to cover emergency management responsibilities for the county. It was an emergency operation plan for the county. I was sheriff at the time and I can tell you that took a lot of hard work to put that together. Ellsworth Everest was the man in charge at that time of what we called civil defense back then. It's been changed since then to cover emergency management."

Quite a few people from around the county helped put the plan into place back then. It was adopted by the county commissioners in 1988 and has been in place since then.

In early spring the county was contacted by the State Emergency Management Agency to become involved in a program to update the county's emergency management plan.

"In our course of conversation, we needed to talk with them and knew we needed to update our plan because the emphasis was put on terrorism and biochemical agents, which were not addressed in the 1988 plan. We put together a group of people ... the hospital was a big part of this. When it came all down, we had about 40 people involved - police, law enforcement, fire service, EMS service, several agencies, hospitals, doctors, everyone involved. We did a lot of planning again," said Robinson.

On July 23, at Auburn, in DeKalb County, Kosciusko County was part of a four-county tabletop exercise on chemical and biological weapons. The exercise was put on by the federal government - FEMA and SEMA. The state also hired a consultant company to be there for the tabletop exercise.

Robinson said, "We took, from this county, about 40 people over to Auburn to be involved in this tabletop exercise and get prepared for chemical and biological warfare. We're still in the process of putting that program together."

Now, the county is back rewriting the SARA program.

"We have the chemical, biological. That's done. We have the plans set up for that. Now we're going back and going over the plans for natural disasters - tornadoes, blizzards, that sort of stuff," he said.

The emergency management plan is "a long, long drawn-out thing. It's how, what the first responders on the scene need to do - that's the police, firemen, the Haz-Mat team," Robinson said.

Is the county prepared for a biological or chemical attack?

"No. Yes, we do have a Haz-Mat team that was formed in the county several years ago," said Robinson. "They've been involved and have had a Haz-Mat trailer set up and people there, but to handle a mass contamination - no, we do not have enough equipment to handle it."

In the near future, he said, the county is planning an exercise to see where it stands. County officials are developing an emergency local planning committee. One was in place but many of the members of the committee have moved on.

"I'm in the process now of revitalizing that plan committee," said Robinson. "It's not just one person. It's a whole big contingent of people out here who are working to make this thing function and happen."

He said his part is to help facilitate the planning and help Everest make it work.

"If something happened today, I feel we probably wouldn't have enough equipment to take care of it," said Robinson. "How do you plan for something like that? For this county, no matter where it's at, it seems like whenever we've had a disaster, people come together in this county and get things done.

"But we're working to be more prepared for this type of thing. ... It's just something that can't be done overnight. I think, in time, it will come together and I think the people in New York were so overwhelmed and they have much more manpower. It was a terrible event. Something like that would be a terrible thing to happen around here."

He said the possibility of a terrorist attack around here "could happen. Anything can happen. It's just we want to try and be somewhat prepared to handle a situation. There's a lot of stuff that goes up and down the highway out there that we don't know about. Things that go through on the four rails through this county."

Everest has been the county emergency coordinator since around 1980. As for a biological or chemical attack in the county, he said, "There is no one that is prepared for the biological thing. We don't know what they're going to do or what magnitude."

Regardless of what happens or how, he said, all the county emergency services will work together to deal with the matter.

He said, "If it's in the county, we all work together." [[In-content Ad]]