By Clint Confehr

Senior Staff Writer

Emergency crews were put though their paces here Thursday during a drill based on the scenario of a gas leak fueling a fire that broke containers, mixed chemicals and caused an explosion.

Another drill - one with a scenario like what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., last December - is proposed for July at a Marshall County school, officials said.

While communication between agencies was better last week compared to a previous drill, there was a problem from the first alert Thursday, according to discussion during a debriefing at Marshall Medical Center. The 911 caller didn't say there was more than one injured person.

More ambulances would have been sent, had the magnitude of the factory explosion been known, said Bill Reuter, director of the Marshall County Emergency Medical Service.

The drill was conducted at a storage building owned by Calsonic Kansei North America.

The drill was made more realistic with wounds painted on faces, but some emergency services were not performed. Workers exposed to chemicals must be washed. Volunteers portraying victims would have had to disrobe as they dunked themselves in one washing pool after another. The end result - as one emergency crewman explained - would be people in their birthday suits.

"Every patient you would have received would be hypothermic," Reuter said during the debriefing.

The portable pools were not used that cold Thursday morning because they might have suffered a tear. Repairing leaks to the equipment might cost $1,500, depending on the type of pool used.

Another realization from the drill was that some patient tags were missing when they arrived at Marshall Medical Center's emergency room.

"If they were real patients and were non-responsive, they wouldn't have taken their tags off," said Karen Martin, director of nursing at MMC.

Nurse Carla Tinnon, manager of surgery at MMC, advised emergency services that the leaders who planned the factory explosion drill "want to do an active shooting drill. Give us a date and we'll plan for it."

Reuter indicated that exercise would probably have to be in July after school lets out for the summer and before August when classes resume.