{"id":24962,"date":"2024-11-08T10:17:39","date_gmt":"2024-11-08T17:17:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mancos-and-emergency-teams-host-disaster-exercise-to-assess-emergency-preparedness\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T05:04:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:04:55","slug":"mancos-and-emergency-teams-host-disaster-exercise-to-assess-emergency-preparedness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mancos-and-emergency-teams-host-disaster-exercise-to-assess-emergency-preparedness\/","title":{"rendered":"Mancos and emergency teams host disaster exercise to assess emergency preparedness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Classic
Classic Air took part in the weekend\u2019s exercise. (Southwest Incident Management Team\/Courtesy Photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

A disaster exercise was hosted by the town of Mancos, Montezuma County Office of Emergency Management, the Southwest Incident Management Team and other local first responders to assess rescue team preparedness and practice an emergency scenario. The exercise took place this past weekend.<\/p>\n

This scenario was created to \u201csimulate the consequences of an impending failure\u201d of the Jackson Gulch Dam above Mancos, on Road N.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe county is very aware that there is a hazard there, that if something should ever happen to that dam, that does strand people on the other side,\u201d Vicki Shaffer, Montezuma County PIO, told The<\/em> Journal<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The exercise started with a training and briefing on Friday afternoon, followed by an all-day exercise on Saturday. The \u201cafter-action\u201d review\u201d was held on Sunday morning.<\/p>\n

The incident post command was held at the Mancos Fire Station, with teams spread out along the dam and the path the water would follow, should the dam fail.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur scenario was that someone had discovered cracks along the top of the dam and piping in the interior,\u201d Shaffer said. \u201cThe exercise was designed to exercise the county\u2019s ability to respond to that type of situation. Some of the objectives for the exercise were to work with the emergency support functions partners, such as the water district up there, the Bureau of Reclamation that manage the dam, the town of Mancos, Mancos Marshal\u2019s Office, State Patrol, C-DOT and the regular people who came to play.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"More
More than 60 people participated in a disaster exercise hosted by the town of Mancos. (Southwest Incident Management Team)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Southwest Health System\u2019s EMS, Civil Air Patrol, Montezuma County Search and Rescue and Classic Air Medical helicopter also were involved. Mancos Mayor Cindy Simpson and some of the trustees from the town board participated as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe invited and utilized as many partners as we could throughout the area,\u201d Shaffer said. \u201cWe had an incredible turnout.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were over 60 people in the Emergency Operations Center, and Shaffer said that doesn\u2019t include the Civil Air Patrol pilot, observers, helicopter crew and other partners who joined remotely. Cortez City Manager Drew Saunders flew the Civil Air Patrol plane.<\/p>\n

Some \u201cregular citizens\u201d participated as actors who \u201cpretended to be distraught\u201d because they wanted to go \u201cback to their homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey read the riot act to some of our participants, which was kind of fun. Then we involved some of our community emergency response team,\u201d Shaffer said. \u201cTwo of them were sisters that had to be rescued and flown out of the area, and they both got to take a quick ride on Classic Air.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before the event officially commenced, an alert was sent via the county\u2019s emergency alert system to let citizens know the exercise was taking place and that there wasn\u2019t an actual emergency.<\/p>\n

Shaffer said the law enforcement agencies, participating crews and the mayor were all pleased with how the exercise went.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that especially the officials from Mancos were really pleased,\u201d Shaffer said. \u201cThe Marshal\u2019s Office had very favorable comments on how he thought it went.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the objectives Shaffer mentioned was \u201cthe ability to respond to an incident within an incident.\u201d Their extra \u201cincident\u201d was based on the pet kangaroos who escaped in Durango last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just kind of made it part of our scenario. In our scenario, the Mancos town marshal was injured while trying to wrangle one of the kangaroos. So, the ability to pull resources from the \u2018evacuations\u2019 that we had going on and pull people away from that to go handle the second incident. \u2026 It was really quick,\u201d Shaffer said. \u201cEverybody responded like they were supposed to, except for the giggling a little bit because it was kind of funny.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Shaffer described the plan put in place during the exercise as \u201csolid,\u201d she emphasized the importance of county residents signing up for the emergency alert notification system.<\/p>\n

Right now, only about 2,600 people are signed up for the entire county.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not near enough,\u201d Shaffer said. \u201cIn an instance like that, where we\u2019re needing to evacuate an entire community, that\u2019s the fastest way to do it, to be able to alert them on their phones. We do have the sheriff\u2019s office who would go door to door, but that\u2019s the fastest way for people to get notified.\u201d<\/p>\n

The<\/em> Journal<\/em> attempted to contact Simpson and Mancos Marshal Justen Goodall for comments about the exercise, but did not receive a response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Exercise was a simulation of Jackson Gulch dam failure<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24963,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,52,83,60,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-24962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-law-enforcement","tag-mancos","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24962"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78746,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24962\/revisions\/78746"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24962"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=24962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}