DISASTER EXERCISE BROADENS SCOPE

The largest emergency medical response exercise in the nation's history, an event slated for Cape Girardeau in October, has taken on even greater proportions.

"Operation Steel Cure II" first announced in May by federal, state and local authorities will now be held also in coordination with a mock medical disaster exercise by the National Disaster Medical System, officials said Monday.

The four-day exercise, called "NDMS 92-Open Arms," will be held Oct. 22-25. Operation Steel Cure II will be held primarily from Oct. 23-24.

Both exercises will involve staged responses to major earthquakes striking the region. The Steel Cure earthquake will measure 7.4 on the Richter scale and will strike Oct. 23 three miles west of Cape Girardeau; the NDMS earthquake will measure 6.8 and will strike Oct. 22 along the New Madrid Fault line at Marked Tree, Ark.

Simulated casualties will be flown out of Cape Girardeau by C-130 and C-141 transport aircraft to both in-state and out-state locations. The coordinated exercises will give emergency response officials the opportunity to test and hone their abilities to respond to catastrophic disasters.

Federal, state and local officials met Monday at the Cape Girardeau Fire Department station at Sprigg and Independence to discuss the exercises. In addition to Cape Girardeau, the activities of the National Disaster Medical System exercise will be primarily focused on two other cities: Memphis, Tenn. and Stuttgart, Ark.

Steel Cure II will deal with 1,000 serious simulated casualties, 400 of whom will probably be treated locally, said Major James G. Mohan of the Missouri Air National Guard. Medical and support units of the Army and Air National Guard will take part in the operation.

Meanwhile, the NDMS scenario calls for 2,200 mock fatalities and 31,000 simulated casualties. About 10,000 of the casualties will be seriously injured.

Officials say the operation is drawing international attention. Capt. Anita Satterly of the U.S. Public Health Service said she understood Sweden's health minister would be in Cape Girardeau for the event.

"This is really going to be the largest," she said of the Cape Girardeau segment of the operation. "I think it's going to be the best too because so much planning has been done."

Interest from presidential candidates is also probable, said Peggy Phillips of Washington, D.C., a congressional affairs specialist with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"If nothing else it would be good to get Marilyn Quayle down here," Phillips said. "She's been very supportive of NDMS and is on the FEMA Advisory Board."

Quayle, the wife of Vice President Dan Quayle, understands that federal, state and local disaster authorities need to work together, she said.

Among the cities to be used for patient movements from Cape Girardeau are St. Louis and Kansas City; Lincoln, Neb.; Little Rock, Ark.; and Jackson, Miss. Disaster medical assistance teams will fly into Cape Girardeau from cities including St. Louis and St. Joseph; Albuquerque, N.M.; Fort Wayne, Ind.; Toledo, Ohio; Westland, Mich.; Tulsa, Okla.; and Clinton, Miss.

The area's casualty collection points will be in Cape Girardeau at the Arena Building and Fire Station No. 2; Delta; and Jackson, with the Cape Girardeau Municipal Airport serving as the coordinating center.

Satterly said the NDMS originally planned to hold its exercise in 1990. But because of Desert Shield and the Persian Gulf War, she said, the plan was scrapped.

Then the NDMS thought it could hold its exercise in conjunction with an exercise by FEMA, she said. But Satterly said it was found at a table top meeting that the exercise plans weren't ready and FEMA didn't have the needed money, so the agency canceled the operation.

Steel Cure II was chosen as the coordinating event because NDMS could wait no longer in light of disasters such as the California earthquakes to carry out its exercise, Satterly said.

At their meeting, the officials stressed that the operation did not revolve just around the threat of an earthquake. Mark A. Winkler, the Southeast Missouri Area Coordinator for the State Emergency Management Agency, said, "The emphasis needs to stay on the fact that this is a medical exercise."

Peg Maloy, a representative of FEMA in Washington, D.C., said the response is being held for any type of disaster that could happen, including tornadoes or a "winter storm gone wild."

"This is to test the local, state, federal collaboration to respond to any type of episode that causes a strain on our medical type of systems," added Satterly. "It just happens that an earthquake is a good scenario to use."

New Mexico climatologist Iben Browning projected a major earthquake would strike the New Madrid Fault between Dec. 1 and Dec. 5, 1990. The earthquake never took place.