How the Idaho National Laboratory responds to emergencies

EDITOR’S NOTE: EastIdahoNews.com is working with Idaho National Laboratory to celebrate its 75th anniversary. Each month, we’ll highlight the history, achievements and trials of the U.S. Department of Energy’s desert site. We’ll explore the INL’s influence on eastern Idaho and its impact on local people.

IDAHO FALLS – This spring, around 120 Idaho National Laboratory employees rushed to their emergency stations to respond to a boiler explosion.

Idaho National Laboratory firefighters rushed to the Specific Manufacturing Capability (SMC) facility to quench the flames.

But there was no fire.

Although firefighters did respond, and emergency protocol was activated on June 5, there wasn’t an actual explosion either. This was a fictional scenario for INL’s emergency response organization and SMC employees to practice emergency preparedness.

This task force comprises employees from the Emergency Operation Center and the Joint Information Center, who work together to respond to the situation and disseminate accurate information.

The Emergency Operation Center

The EOC has multiple divisions with different functions.

Command Room

The Command Room is staffed by senior leadership within the EOC. They receive information from various emergency control centers across the laboratory and are responsible for coordinating the response.

The emergency director, who also speaks on behalf of the laboratory director during these incidents, was in charge. A support director offers assistance to the emergency director “and anyone else who has questions about processes, off-site notifications, or any type of emergency management centric activities,” Emergency Management Public Liaison Carisa Schultz said.

Some who may have questions are representatives of the U.S. Department of Energy. Schultz said the federal office “is always very interested in what’s happening here in Idaho. ”

Planning Room

The Planning Room is staffed by personnel who perform “consequence assessment.” This means they evaluate safety, environmental and health outcomes. When applicable, they factor in meteorological and chemical data, such as in a radiological incident.

The Planning Room is also tasked with managing the laboratory’s resources to best respond to emergencies.

“That’s where they figure out what we have and where it might go,” Schultz said.

Public Information Room

The officials in the Public Information Room are in charge of gathering information about the incident and determining its veracity.

“That information is compiled, verified and approved so that we can publish that and share that with media, the public and stakeholders,” Schultz said.

Although this office works on verifying and compiling information, they don’t have to do the work of communicating it to the public. Their objective is focused on the fact-checking aspect of emergency management.

The Joint Information Center

The Joint Information Center, known as the JIC, is another room staffed by the lab’s communications professionals. These employees are the ones who disseminate the information put together from the Public Information Room.

“It is the arm that tells people what’s happening. They’re communicating (in) real time with the media and the public who have questions about what’s happening at our site,” Schultz said.

Communicating with the public brings a whole host of responsibilities.

“We’re handling all public inquiries. We’re handling media inquiries. Everything filters through here so that we can provide news releases, communications, respond to questions, everything,” said Joelyn Hansen, public information director assistant.

Some members take on the responsibility of communicating with media outlets as they’re provided with new information from the EOC. This can be local, regional or national outlets, depending on the scale of the incident.

Others focus their efforts on directly informing the public. They may do this by recording and releasing a video summarizing the latest developments or posting a written statement.

To effectively communicate, they have to listen. Some members of the JIC spend their time monitoring chatter on social media, looking out for rumors they may need to address, and others will read and watch the reporting on the incident.

The value of accurate information

When an emergency is in progress, it’s understandable that people want new information as quickly as possible.

“We understand that the public gets very anxious, especially in this world where we’re expecting to see news turnarounds so quickly,” Hansen said.

Despite this, the goal is not to release new information as quickly as possible. Instead, the public information room and the JIC aim to release accurate information.

“Our biggest concern is really less about the time factor but more about the actual information that’s going out, that it’s accurate and factual, and is also going to be better information for those people to have, and we’re working as fast as we can to get that information out,” Hansen said.

Sarah Neumann, media relations and digital content manager, spoke to the potential for inaccuracy.

“In the heat of a moment when there’s an accident, you might get something that comes in that says there’s three injured people, and then an hour later, it’s five injured people,” Neumann said. “A lot of that is trying to get the accurate information the first time, which might take a little bit longer, just because we’re checking and double checking that information.”

An essential aspect of ensuring factual information circulates is keeping track of the public conversation.

“Rumors happen. Things can kind of spiral out of control,” Hansen said. She and the rest of the JIC and public information room want to help alleviate the public’s anxiety by setting the record straight with verifiable information.

“We’re here to help ease their fears a little bit, also provide them with information to better understand what’s happening. Unfortunately, sometimes that information takes time,” Hansen said.

Idaho National Laboratory’s first responders

Although the laboratory could face a wide range of emergencies, like the boiler explosion in the practice scenario, the most common are wildland fires on the Snake River Plain.

The agency that tackles these emergencies is the INL Fire Department, which covers 890 square miles of high desert terrain. It has 90 firefighters, with 22 on duty constantly.

The department has three fire stations across these plains that dispatch firefighters to address not just fires.

“We cover the full gamut of cases,” INL Fire Chief Jim Blair said. “Our firefighters have to be trained to a high level to be able to handle pretty much any emergency that gets thrown out.”

Responding to emergencies across such a wide range of land presents unique challenges for the department. One of these challenges is the miles of varying terrain they have to cross to get to some calls. In some cases, firefighters have to get to the top of one of the three buttes in wintery conditions, and they have to do it quickly.

Another challenge is that the department is protecting critical electrical infrastructure across this wide-open desert. These are crucial for them to protect and present dangers when fighting fires.

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Michael Auble, site utilities division director, pointed out the dangers firefighters face when working near electrical infrastructure.

“Imagine a fire burning through this area catches the pole on fire. If they start spraying that pole, and they spray up. Now they’re at risk of electrocution, if the line isn’t de-energized already,” Auble said. “If the pole has been burned, but not fully through, they could be out working on the line, and the wind could blow that pole over… They could be 700 feet away and get hit by one of these lines.”

To mitigate these dangers, the laboratory coats its poles. It uses two kinds of coating from a Georgia-based company called Osmosis.

One is a paintable fire retardant that hardens when it dries, and the other is a fiberglass mesh coated in rapidly-expanding fire retardant. The paintable coating protects the poles for up to 10 years, even with multiple exposures to fire, and the mesh lasts for the life of the pole.

Another challenge is the logistics of transporting water across great distances. To do this, the department operates a 10,000-gallon and a 3,000-gallon water tender to shuttle water out to firefighters, either right from a water tender to an engine or by dumping it in drop tanks.

In the event of a large enough wildfire, it can call up not just its own firefighters but also from surrounding areas through a robust mutual aid agreement. In return, Jefferson, Clark, Butte, Bingham and Bonneville can request aid from the INL Fire Department when their resources are stretched thin.

“In those cases, we have hundreds of firefighters from all over the state from our aid agreement helping us out,” Blair said.

How all of these elements of emergency response work together

To close out the emergency practice response, the INL held a faux press conference. Officials involved in the response stood before a crowd of actual reporters and employees posing as reporters and received questions as if the emergency had happened.

Neumann said they do this so that officials can get practice with public speaking.

“We do all of that to try to make it a real scenario and something that they can really practice feeling safe and more confident,” Neumann said.

This news conference and the drill itself are a reminder of the importance of specialization in the structure of INL’s emergency response.

Shultz said the practice response brings people from widely different backgrounds together and teaches them how to execute a response.

“Through this training and qualification of the emergency response organization, they are teams,” Shultz said. “Everyone has to work together in order for our organization to function, so we’re co-dependent.”