TOP-OFF 4: The sixth floor view
Well folks, the (simulated) dirty bomb has gone off and Multnomah County's Emergency Operations Center is in full swing. In the run-up to T4 (what the cool kids are calling Top Officials 4), our office really didn't know what to expect or what was expected of us. So today, Jeff and I took a little lunch time trip to the Multnomah building's basement to watch our Emergency Team work their magic. I must say that to this political staffer they all seemed to know what they were doing and preliminary reports from those in the know describe a scenario that is going fairly smoothly - for now.
The County's Emergency Operations Center (EOC) is composed of two large rooms crammed with phones, computers, radios, flat screen televisions and assorted important looking emergency stuff (please forgive my technical jargon). In each room, some of the county's finest employees and department heads were working in teams: Logistics, Finance, Operations, Legal, Law Enforcement, etc., reacting to information coming in from "the field" and sending out status updates to other EOCs.
In one corner, representatives from the Red Cross coordinated with our Department of County Human Services to ensure that any shelters had the resources to take care of evacuees with special needs. Another cluster of folks was flagging schools under the radiological plume that needed to be evacuated. But, perhaps the calmest people in the room were the finance folks, who are charged with dutifully tracking what Multnomah County taxpayers are spending on overtime and other resources so that we can send a bill to FEMA later.
I'm sad to report to Scott Moore of the Mercury that no hooligans dressed as batman or Osama bin Laden will be able to penetrate our EOC for added entertainment value. Jeff, the commissioner himself, was carded by Department of Homeland Security officials on our walk through. Unfortunately, I was so amused I missed my big chance to scream, "DON'T YOU KNOW WHO HE IS?!?!?!" and stomp my heel up and down.
The last little oddity I'll share before I log off is that this whole exercise is being reported on a real time basis by Stone Phillips (yep, Dateline Stone) on a make-believe news channel called VNN! It's complete with a running news ticker, pretty graphics and live news conferences.
Comment below on your take on "T4" so far, and we'll update you later as we gather more info.
Posted on October 16, 2007
Comments
(Note: Comments are the views of their authors, and no one else.)
Posted by: goldcoastdippy - November 1, 2007 05:39 AM
the whole idea of this taking up and extra fifteen minutes of the hit series 24, leaves a little left unsaid about the rush job to duck n cover. When in the big city there wasnt no way of evacutation if and when a crisis occured. Its prolly a good idea to prepare for the worse and still, its cool Oregonians being there own, may as well take it on the sunny side, and go along with the protesters, theyre people smart and know what theyre looking for.And less likely to freak at the wild goose chase.