If you’ve been listening to your police scanner this morning, you’ve heard about all the major disasters that hit Brownwood this morning.

Fortunately, it was just a mock disaster situation that simulated a couple of tornadoes touching down in Brownwood, doing major destruction around the HPU campus, and turning over some hazardous material railroad cars at the rail yard.

The scenario had about 150 people injured that were moved to the Brownwood Coliseum where the Red Cross was set up. The mock disaster included a power outage at the Law Enforcement Center. Brown County ARES, that’s Amateur Radio Emergency Services, opened up the county’s emergency operations center at the law enforcement center, while the county’s emergency communications trailer was set up at the Red Cross.

This mornings’ simulated emergency test was to test and assess the capability of our area ham radio operators, and the inter-cooperation between them, law enforcement and EMS communications systems.  Jerry Wetherholt, the ARES Incident staging commander said things went smooth for the most part, but there are some operational and procedural issues that need to be addressed in the event of an actual disaster situation.

“The purpose is to test our abilities and the abilities of our equipment,” said Wetherholt.  “Find any potential problems, and fix them today rather than wait until time and manpower is actually critical, when there are lives at stake.”

Brown County Emergency Coordinator Brent Bush will meet with ARES coordinator Bill Fraser and the emergency communications operators to do an assessment of this morning’s emergency preparedness test.

Today’s test was in preparation for the area simulated emergency test (SET) coming up in June.  ARES communications incident command stations were set up at the Brownwood Red Cross, Brownwood Regional Hospital, Section Hand Restaurant, Santa Fe Rail Yard, HPU, and on Bangs Hill.  Cliff Conway and the Comanche County ARES operators also assisted, and brought in their communications trailer as well.   Brownwood’s Communications Supervisor Dedra Molotsky operated Brown County communications trailer at the Red Cross.