Tooele County's Emergency Operations Center played host to the largest multi-agency emergency training exercise in the county ever yesterday, and organizers said the event indicated the county's first responders are prepared to handle any manner of disaster.

First responders from the Tooele City Police Department, Utah State Highway Patrol, Tooele Fire Department and North Tooele Fire Department were joined by Mountain West Medical Center EMTs and a hazmat team from Salt Lake City to address several simultaneous simulations. The joint operation is a requirement by law and is made possible by the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program. CSEPP has invested more than $70 million in emergency preparedness in the counties surrounding Deseret Chemical Depot: Tooele, Utah, and Salt Lake. Another $14.4 million was provided, through CSEPP, to improve the chemical depot's emergency response capability. These funds provide personnel, training and equipment. Part of the training is an annual exercise involving all three counties and multiple agencies.

While the emergency crews and law enforcement officers responded to three different disasters in the field, another mock disaster was unleashed on emergency personnel at Deseret Chemical Depot.

"What we are doing is thinning them as far as we can," said Terry Arthur, an Army spokeswoman.

The simulated events included an overturned tanker filled with ammonia that was leaking into the air. According to the script, the driver had been shot by a sniper, causing him to veer off SR-36 just before SR-73.

First responders stopped about a half-mile before the wreck to put on protective suits before entering the "hot" zone, while sharing information about wind speed and direction via a radio system. Ammonia vapor is not visible to the naked eye, but smoke flares were used for the simulation to depict which direction the wind was blowing and just how much area would be affected.

At the same time, emergency sirens wailed at the nearby Deseret Chemical Depot where a truck hauling containers of mustard agent had caught fire. Mustard agent is actually a liquid, and quite viscous. It would pose a potential threat to outlining residential areas if storage areas at the DCD caught fire, particularly if the plume of smoke traveled a great distance.

While Army and local first responders scrambled to contain those two events, another simulation was playing out on the north side of Tooele: A car had collided with a school bus carrying 24 students from Clarke N. Johnsen Junior High, their teachers and a driver. The students not only suffered injuries from the accident, but also suffered the effects of pepper spray that a student had discharged. Firefighters used the jaws of life to cut the driver of the car out and dozens of emergency workers attended to the needs of the "wounded." If this had been an actual emergency three helicopters would have landed to take students to hospitals in Salt Lake, said Tooele City Fire Chief Chris Garcia, who has participated in about 10 such training exercises.

He and the other agency heads did not look at the scripts beforehand, so they didn't know what type of situations they would confront.

While all of this was happening, disaster coordinators fielded more calls for assistance. One call was an area-wide power outage in Erda, which Rocky Mountain Power is working to fix. Another was a triage in the north parking lot of Mountain West Medical Center conducted by the hazmat team from Salt Lake. All of these events were coordinated through the Emergency Operations Center on the first floor of the old Tooele County Courthouse building.

Army and civilian observers took notes throughout the event. Those notes will be used in a summary report that will not be complete for several months, and may result in changes in protocol.

County commissioners Jerry Hurst, Bruce Clegg and Colleen Johnson sat with Tooele County Sheriff Frank Park and Tooele County Attorney Doug Hogan to monitor the situation and  answer questions throughout.

"The initial impression from the evaluators was that we did a great job overall," said EM Director Kari Sagers.

The only problems that occurred during the exercise were in communications, she added.

"Initially the amateur radio people who were relaying information did not have the Red Cross information to be able to talk to them, but that was quickly addressed," Sagers said. "Also, initially the ambulance personnel were relaying information to the EOC, not the hospital. That caused some confusion, but was also quickly resolved."

As a result of the exercise, Sagers said she was confident that Tooele County first responders could handle any incident.