CAPE COUNTY PART OF STATEWIDE PREPAREDNESS TEST

JACKSON -- Cape Girardeau County was among several counties that participated in a statewide nuclear-disaster preparedness exercise Wednesday.

While such simulations are routinely conducted each year, Deputy Cape Girardeau County Emergency Services Coordinator Martha Vandivort said year's exercise scenario was more timely, and realistic than others.

That's because the scenario was written just six days before the Aug. 12 failed coup in which Communist hardliners attempted to overthrow Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Vandivort said Thursday's scenario was written in early August by Ed Gray, a planner and exercise officer with the Missouri Department of Public Safety's State Emergency Management Agency. "It was amazingly close to what actually happened over there," said Vandivort.

According to the exercise scenario, Gorbachev was forced by the hardliners to restore order in the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. After its victory in the Persian Gulf, the United States demanded that the Soviet Union grant independence to the Baltic states, which Gorbachev agreed to do if certain conditions were met by the international community.

The scenario continues:

"This was too much for the Conservatives, led by Comrade Colonel Vladimir Ilyich Ulanoff, who, along with major Politboro allies, deposed of Gorbachev and Russian Republic President Boris Yeltsin. The new president declared a state of emergency throughout the entire Soviet system. The president of the United States issues an ultimatum to the Soviet government to remove all troops from eastern Europe as set forth in the agreements with the Gorbachev regime, or all previous treaties with the Soviet Union would be declared null and void. But the Ulanoff government said this would be considered by them as an act of war."

Under the scenario, the American president issued a National Security Council directive to state and local governments asking them to provide a status of their civil defense preparedness levels. The president wanted the information no later than 10 a.m. on Sept. 12.

Unlike previous exercises, Vandivort said this one did not simulate a nuclear attack on the United States. Instead, the state and local governments were asked to review their emergency operations plans, particularly the annexes dealing with a possible nuclear strike.

"One aspect of the exercise was that Cape and other counties would be in what is termed an "increased readiness phase," said Vandivort. She said this phase would be somewhat similar to an increase in the U.S. military's Defense Condition, or DefCon level, from its normal peacetime level of DefCon 1.

During the exercise, which began at 9 a.m. and ended at noon, the Cape County Emergency Operations Center staff and representatives of other emergency services agencies in the county responded to inquires on civil defense preparations from Jefferson City.

Agencies participating included the Cape Girardeau office of the American Red Cross, 1140th Engineer Battalion of the Missouri Army National Guard, the Cape Girardeau County Health Department, the Cape County Ministerial Alliance, and the Cape Girardeau Composite Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol.

The Red Cross' responsibility was to make sure there shelter space and supplies were available while members of the 1140th Battalion were to provide communications and radio monitoring services.

Vandivort said the state inquiries included updates on the number and status of local shelters for housing evacuees and the injured, and resources for food, water, transportation, blood supplies and other necessities that would be needed in a nuclear disaster.

Vandivort said in the event of a nuclear disaster, if Cape County were not actually hit, the county, along with other outstate counties, would function as a "host county," receiving evacuees and injured from the St. Louis area.

"During the exercise we also reviewed our emergency operations plan and the `radiological' annex, inspected our civil defense tests, and made operational tests of the `radiological' defense monitor equipment that would be used to detect and indicate the amount and intensity of radioactive fallout," said Vandivort.

She said there are four stages to disaster preparation: pre-emergency, increased readiness, the actual emergency, and recovery. "The recovery stage comes a lot faster and goes much better if you have prepared for the first three stages of a disaster," said Vandivort, "which is why the state and Cape Girardeau County are conducting the exercise."

Despite the seemingly decreased threat of a nuclear war, Vandivort said there are still thousands of nuclear warheads in the Soviet Union, most of them still aimed at the United States. She said there are also a number of unfriendly third-world countries that would not hesitate to launch a terrorist nuclear strike against the U.S. if the opportunity arose.

"Our prayers are that this will never occur; but as long as the nuclear threat to this country remains a possibility we must continue to test and exercise our emergency preparedness for a possible nuclear disaster that could come from a military incident or even a peace-time accident," she said.