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First-responders practice for terrorist attack at YSU
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
It wasn’t for real this time, but an emergency-response exercise Tuesday at Youngstown State University helped prepare law enforcement and first-responders if a terrorist targets campus.
The event involved about 100 federal, state and local personnel.
The scenario involved a terrorist event at a gathering at Moser Hall on campus. In the scenario, a terrorist releases a chemical, believed to be hydrogen cyanide, in the building.
Personnel had to isolate the affected area, evacuate people, treat and transport them to the hospital and search for additional threats.
It’s designed for participants to learn, said Silverio Caggiano, battalion chief with the Youngstown Fire Department and deputy chief of the Mahoning County HazMat Team.
“We learned we have some strengths and we have some weaknesses,” he said.
Officers donned bulky hazmat suits equipped with air tanks and tottered into Moser Hall.
One wiped the condensation from the screen of the oxygen mask and fumbled with the thick protective gloves to open a classroom door.
A victim who didn’t make it (a mannequin) lay in the greenery near a park bench outside Moser Hall.
They had to X-ray items inside two classrooms and the Schwebel Auditorium to check for foreign material.
The exercise continues Thursday involving three rooms in Bliss Hall, the parking lot along Audubon Street behind University Courtyard Apartments in Smoky Hollow and Harrison Field in Smoky Hollow.
Besides Youngstown Fire Department and Mahoning County HazMat, the exercise involves YSU Police, Mahoning County Emergency Management Agency, the FBI, Youngstown Bomb Squad, St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital, Mahoning County Health Department, American Red Cross, Rural Metro Ambulance, the Ohio National Guard’s 52nd Civil Support Team, Department of Homeland Security and other agencies.
“We transported victims to St. Elizabeth,” Caggiano said. “They wanted to see how they handled a surge of patients.”
Part of the exercise also involved communicating with hospital personnel about the root of the contaminant so they could administer the proper treatment.
Caggiano said first-responders have participated in emergency exercises before, but this is the first at YSU. Although classes aren’t in session, the university remains open.
People walking on campus added a realistic element to the scenario that wouldn’t have been available at an isolated location, the battalion chief said.
YSU also is a good location because of its urban location.
The event provided an opportunity for people from each agency to get to know each other and each other’s responsibility too.
“It helps to do that in practice in case we ever have to do it when it’s the real thing,” Caggiano said.