Mesa County Joint Information Center

Local Hospitals to Participate in Hazmat Exercise

 MESA COUNTY, Colo. – The VA Medical Center, Community Hospital, Family Health West and St. Mary’s Hospital will participate in a full-scale hazmat training exercise on Friday, October 25, 2013.  The exercise will begin promptly at 10:15am with a mock call to 911 dispatch prefacing “THIS IS A DRILL”.

The Grand Junction Locomotion Commotion full-scale exercise is designed to establish a learning environment for players to exercise emergency response plans, policies, and procedures as they pertain to external chemical threats (Blister Agent, Toxic Industrial, Nerve Agent, Chlorine), health care first receiver decontamination, and triage during a mass casualty incident.

Other response organizations include: Mesa County Office of Emergency Management, Mesa County EMS (emergency medical services), and Mesa County Health Department.  Other participating organizations include: Collbran Job Corps, Medical Reserve Corps, and Grand Junction Regional Communication Center.

“During an incident, it is imperative to utilize coordinated information sharing protocols to receive and transmit timely, relevant, and actionable incident-specific health care information to partner organizations during response and recovery,” said Mike Hill, Emergency Medical Services Coordinator for Mesa County.

Members of the media are welcome and encouraged to cover this full-scale hazmat training exercise.  Community Hospital will be setting up a large hazmat tent onsite as well as a media staging area for members of the media who wish to obtain b-roll footage.  Incident updates will be posted via the JIC (joint information center) blog at https://mesacountyjic.com/.

For additional information please contact the PIO at any of the four local hospitals.