Riverside readiness

Southeast Missourian

A lone terrorist sucker-punched Cape Girardeau twice Saturday -- first with a bombed oil pipeline that sent hundreds of gallons of crude spewing into the Mississippi River and later with the detonation of a so-called "dirty bomb" on a docked barge that injured three river workers and exposed them to dangerous levels of radiation.

The terrorist, apparently working alone, was finally apprehended after a shootout with a special operations team of law enforcement officers. The oil slick, which drifted to Cape Girardeau from the Exxon pipeline near Chester, Ill., was safely removed from the water by a special oil spill response team.

If it hadn't all been a training simulation for a multitude of Southeast Missouri emergency responders, it may well have been the single biggest catastrophe in Cape Girardeau history.

Instead, it was an intricate six-hour training exercise done to make sure, if such a day actually comes, no one's caught off guard.

"It's sort of like what UCLA basketball coach John Wooden said: Failure to plan is planning to fail," said Bob Dopp, executive director of the Missouri Emergency Response Commission and one of the exercise coordinators. "What we're doing today is making sure we're prepared."

More than 130 workers from federal, state and local agencies teamed up for what Dopp said was Missouri's largest emergency preparedness exercise of this kind.

Some of the participating agencies were Cape Girardeau's police and fire departments, Sikeston Department of Public Safety -- including its special operations team that is akin to a SWAT team -- Cape Girardeau County Private Ambulance Service, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Missouri Department of Public Safety, the state Department of Natural Resources and the FBI.

"The overall objective is to get to know one another," said Jackson Bostic of the Department of Natural Resources in Poplar Bluff, Mo. "The agencies need to know what the other one does and not worry about turf battles. No one agency can take care of a problem like this. We have to work together."

Bostic acknowledged that international terrorism probably wouldn't happen in Southeast Missouri.

"But there is domestic terrorism, like a disgruntled employee," he said. "If he did something like this, we'd have to deal with it, too."

Three 'injured'

The agencies were given a scenario and were told to respond to it, using each group's expertise.

The exercise began at 8 a.m. with a report of a dirty bomb explosion -- actually two barrel drums of honey that didn't explode -- at Missouri Dry Docks on the river. Three barge employees -- in reality three 17- and 18-year-old volunteer victims -- were said to be injured in the dirty bomb blast, which sprayed radioactive material -- actually red Kool-Aid -- over their bodies.

A hazardous materials handling team made up of Jackson firefighters and Sikeston DPS officers went into action. After setting up a decontamination area, the officers used special scanners to monitor radiation levels. Then, dressed in decontamination suits, two officers started down the dock toward the injured workers lying motionless on the barge.

That's when the terrorist -- actually Charlie Griffith, deputy coordinator of the Cape Girardeau County Office of Emergency Preparedness -- opened fire on the team from a nearby shed where he'd been hiding. The bullets were blanks.

The special operations team, a SWAT-like group made up of Sikeston DPS officers led by director Drew Juden, slithered through some tall weeds toward the suspect. A sniper crouched atop a nearby building.

The terrorist surrendered after a brief standoff.

"If this had been a real exercise, it wouldn't have lasted that long," Juden said. "Our sniper would have already fired off a disabling shot."

Cleaning up oil

Another main focus of the training was to test the Coast Guard's Vessel of Opportunity Skimming System, or VOSS, which is a modular oil recovery system that can be secured and operated from a vessel at a spill site.

After a lunch break, the Coast Guard and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers went to work to capture the "oil" that had traveled down the Mississippi from Chester, Ill.

Participants dumped large bags of rice hulls into the river, and the VOSS sucked them out of the water. It was mounted on the corps' Pathfinder boat.

Harvey Dexter, a civilian environmental protection specialist with the Coast Guard in New Orleans, said that the system can skim oil from the water at a rate of 190 gallons a minute.

The rice hulls, which pose no threat to the river, Dexter said, were captured with a floating circular solid screen and then a special tube was used to suck the hulls from the water. The VOSS was operated for about two hours on the river.

"A real spill would be a lengthy process," Dexter said. "Today, we're just trying to give people an idea how it works."

After the exercise was over, Lt. Roger Fields of the Cape Girardeau Police Department said he learned a lot.

"We are very privileged in Southeast Missouri to have such cooperation between departments," he said. "I've gone to training exercises all over the state, and you don't see that everywhere."

smoyers@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137