{"id":38016,"date":"2022-10-06T23:40:18","date_gmt":"2022-10-07T05:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/crisis-drills-in-farmington-and-bloomfield\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:41:50","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:41:50","slug":"crisis-drills-in-farmington-and-bloomfield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/crisis-drills-in-farmington-and-bloomfield\/","title":{"rendered":"Crisis drills in Farmington and Bloomfield"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"San
San Juan County Sheriff\u2019s deputies park at crisis drill site and direct traffic Wednesday on Herrera Street in Farmington. (David Edward Albright\/Durango Herald)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Emergency personnel from various agencies in San Juan County converged Wednesday on two cities for two emergency drills.<\/p>\n

At the Farmington crisis exercise site on Herrera Street, just off Main Street, Devin Neeley, San Juan County public relations and film manager, said two distinct scenarios were being played out, the other in Bloomfield. Devin was joined by Albuquerque FBI Public Information Officer Frank Fisher to share information about the operations.<\/p>\n

The Farmington drill simulated a hostage scenario, and the Bloomfield drill trained personnel to handle a toxic chemical leak. About 30 people, including the Bloomfield Fire Department and the 18-member hazardous materials team, handled the simulated crisis.<\/p>\n

\"An
An emergency management trailer serves as command center for a drill Wednesday on Herrera Street in Farmington. (David Edward Albright\/Durango Herald)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Information
Information officers Devin Neeley of San Juan County and Frank Fisher of the FBI office in Albuquerque talk at the staging area of the emergency drill Wednesday in Farmington. (David Edward Albright\/Durango Herald)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

On Thursday during his drive to Albuquerque, drill coordinator and San Juan County Emergency Manager Mike Mestas said \u201cthe drill went very, very well, it was very successful. Homeland Security from Santa Fe was up to evaluate, they gave us great marks. But there\u2019s always something to work on, always some hiccups.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drills are designed to test equipment, practicing procedures and improve the skills of emergency responders. Homeland Security helps to fund the San Juan County Emergency Management Department and necessary equipment, such as hazmat and bomb robots.<\/p>\n

Mestas said six months of planning \u2013 working with various agencies \u2013 went into putting all the pieces in place for this drill. About 150 people participated, including 19 actors who volunteered as part of their involvement with the San Juan College Fire and EMS Academy. At times, even high school drama students have played roles.<\/p>\n

Mestas said they wanted to prepare San Juan Regional Medical Center as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey pretend they\u2019re getting patients from our site,\u201d said Mestas, who worked out of the dispatch center in Aztec.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was the controller and making sure everything flowed the way it was supposed to \u2026 of course, I was getting tons of calls,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

dalbright@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emergency managers get high marks from FEMA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38017,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[138],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-38016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38016","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=38016"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83878,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38016\/revisions\/83878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38016"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=38016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}