Locals practice nuclear meltdown drill

A group of Orange County residents gathered this week at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, waiting to walk through radiation detectors to see if they had been contaminated by fallout from the San Onofre nuclear power plant.

Firefighters and sheriff’s deputies stood by to direct people toward designated processing areas — one for those who had been exposed to radiation and needed to be decontaminated, and another for the fortunate ones who escaped the fallout.

There was no reactor meltdown and radiation leak at San Onofre, of course, and this was just a drill to rehearse how the county would respond to such a disaster.

“I definitely think it improves our preparedness in Orange County,” said Donna Boston, who oversees the Orange County Sheriff’s Department’s Emergency Management Bureau. “Orange County is used as a national model for nuclear preparedness.”

Wednesday’s drill, which involved about 140 people — including about 40 volunteers serving as evacuees — was a dress rehearsal for a March 23 exercise that will be evaluated by federal officials. Observers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency were on hand Wednesday to give feedback ahead of the formal evaluation.

The federal government requires every county with a nuclear power plant to have a disaster plan and practice the plan every few years.

In the case of Orange County, that plan calls for those living within a 10-mile radius of the San Onofre plant — some 180,000 people — to evacuate. An estimated 20% of those would end up at a county evacuation center set up at the fairgrounds.

There, first responders would screen evacuees for radiation exposure, decontaminate them if necessary, give them potassium iodide to protect their thyroids and register them with the Red Cross disaster assistance teams.

Wednesday’s exercise involved first-responders from the Sheriff’s Department, Costa Mesa Fire Department, county Health Care Agency, county Fire Authority and the American Red Cross.

All personnel are trained to handle disasters, but they seldom get to work together and practice the procedures for handling a nuclear incident. At the drill, they practiced setting up and running radiation detectors, medical stations and decontamination showers.

“We do a lot of classroom training,” Boston said, “and then you have to do the on-the-job training as well to make sure that we’re really polished.”

While a radiation leak at San Onofre is unlikely, Boston said drills like this help first-responders prepare for the whole range of disasters, from earthquakes to disease outbreaks.

“It allows us an opportunity to ensure our responders are trained,” she said. “We can apply this … to any kind of situation.”