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Frank Coots,
Crisis City Manager
Crisis City ramping up to new heights
Crisis City is a 156-acre
training complex approximately eight miles southwest of Salina.
Crisis City's primary mission is to provide Kansas first responders,
emergency managers, National Guard and private industry responders with a
state of the art training facility for multi-agency, multi-discipline,
integrated exercises and drills. Crisis City is operated and managed
by the Kansas Division of Emergency Management. Currently there are
nine active training venues available for scheduling at Crisis City, including
a full size train with locomotive, an urban village, technical rescue
tower, two collapsed structures, pipeline, wide-area search, Salamander
Technologies Inter Trax Suite, and the MILO System. Future training
venues are under development, which may include an on- and off-road driving
track, a trailer park, shoot house, and swift water rescue venues.
This
year has been particularly busy for Crisis City. KDEM accepted the
property from the contractor in May 2010. Training began the
following week and use of the facility has been steady throughout the
year. The training schedule continues to fill, with first
responders from Kansas, as well as out of state organizations, desiring use
of the facility as far out as May 2012. Some areas of significant
growth include the development of the pipeline venue, the Inter Trax Suit,
and MILO.
Through
the generosity of the Kansas Pipeline Association, the pipeline venue is a
reality. Volunteers from the Association's 44-plus member companies
donated time, materials and resources to construct the most realistic
pipeline training venue in the nation. A pipeline using actual
petroleum transmission piping was laid and electronically connected to a
control center that overlooks the entire venue. Compressed air and
water can be released under high pressure to simulate a petroleum leak or
release. The realism is enhanced with an overturned petroleum tanker,
three vehicles in an accident scene, a small house with natural gas
plumbing, a well head, two large propane tanks and an open pipeline trench
(trench collapse and worker extraction). This venue is focused
on training scenarios for search and rescue teams, hazardous materials
response teams, emergency management professionals, law enforcement officers
and private industry safety and response personnel.
Recently,
Midwest Card and ID Solutions provided emergency managers and first
responders with detailed training and subsequent deployment of the
Salamander Technologies Inter Trax Suite. This integrated
identification and credentialing system provides on-scene responders with
the unique capability to identify who and what equipment is on scene and
what capabilities or credentials each may possess. This aids the
incident commander and the staff matching the available capabilities to the
proper incident mission, as well as identifying resource shortfalls
required for incident response and recovery. The system has three
separate capabilities: rapid tag, for creating on-scene identification
cards and remote information transmission; command suite, for identifying
on-scene resources and building required response and recovery
organizations; and resource manager, pre-incident compilation of
jurisdictional resources and identification of individual credentials and
capabilities. This total system will not only be used for training,
but can be quickly packaged and deployed to an actual incident as required.
The
newest training venue at Crisis City is the MILO System. The Homeland
Security/Emergency Management North Central Region Planning Council
purchased the systems through grant funds and stationed one system at
Crisis City for use. This is a virtual, interactive training system
designed for law enforcement officers, game wardens, correctional facility
officers, the military and private industry focused on executive protection
or security. The MILO System uses a variety of scenarios to assist
with training on the use of lethal and non-lethal force in multiple
environments. MILO uses a state of the art computer system with
highly interactive software and video projection to place the officers in
realistic, stressful situations where quick, potentially life threatening
decisions must be made on whether to use lethal force using laser-based weapons
or non-lethal force using motion-sensing batons and laser-based tazers or
OC (pepper) spray. Virtual firearms ranges for target practice are
also available in the 460 programmed scenarios.
This
year was a blur of activity but we look forward to an even more active
2011. The staff of Crisis City and all of us at Kansas Division of
Emergency Management wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and
safe New Year. During this Holiday Season, please remember the ones responsible
for protecting our freedoms and defending the liberty of our Great Nation -
our veterans and those currently serving in our armed forces home and
abroad.
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