Colleton County First responders participated in the Statewide Full Scale Exercise which began last week with notifications from the SC Emergency Management Division. The scenario this year involved a fire in Louisiana which disrupted the Colonial Pipeline, which supplies fuel to the east coast. This happened during a severe winter weather event with below freezing temperatures. As the supply issue continued, the power grid suffered due to high use and LP gas, gasoline and diesel fuel were short. As power outages occurred statewide, back up systems began to fail two to three days into the event, knocking out cell phone coverage and the statewide radio system. Responders had to deal with backups to the backups to continue to receive and respond to incidents. Shelters had to be opened to care for people with no heat or electricity and transportation became a problem with the fuel shortages.
During the week, a Hazardous Materials drill was conducted at the Balchem Facility in Green Pond. The company was gracious enough to allow two training tankers to be brought on their site so Fire-Rescue personnel could practice on actual tanker cars. CSX Railroad transported two training rail cars, one pressurized and one non-pressurized, so responders could practice on each. Robert James with CSX Rail, Dennis Babcock with Hepaco and Dennis Maskel with Balchem were all on hand to instruct students. Firefighter-EMTs and Paramedics set up decontamination lines and donned Level A suits to mitigate a leak from one of the rail cars. Personnel were on scene until midday Tuesday.
As with any large scale events, most areas ran well and some areas of improvement were identified.
