Perry Nuclear Power Plant exercise happening this week
Sep. 27—JEFFERSON — Ashtabula, Lake and Geauga counties will be taking part in a series of exercises related to the Perry Nuclear Power Plant this week.
In Ashtabula County, the drill includes a simulation of an event at the plant, taking place at the county's Emergency Operations Center, as well as exercises in Geneva and Saybrook Township.
Ashtabula County EMA Director Mike Fitchet said the EMA is prepared for this week's events. "We're ready to go," he said.
On Monday, Ashtabula EMA staff were in Lake County meeting with participants in the exercise. On Monday night, an exercise was scheduled in Geneva to simulate route alerting if an issue were to arise at the plant.
On Tuesday, a simulation of hostile action at the plant will take place. Participants don't have knowledge of what kind of hostile action will take place before.
"We're going to find out [on Tuesday] when we start getting phone calls, and we have to react to all that," Fitchet said. "Part of it is coordination between all the counties, the state, the plant, police and fire departments, health departments. That's what we're getting tested on, being able to protect the public."
On Wednesday evening, a worker decontamination drill will take place at Lakeside Junior High School.
Fitchet said the cooperation in Ashtabula County is great. "We have great cooperation to put this together, and that's the way it should be," he said.
On Friday, a public meeting will take place at the Lake County Emergency Operations Center to review the exercise.
J.P. Ducro, president of the Ashtabula County Board of Commissioners, said being prepared for disasters is always important.
"I think we tend to minimize [disaster preparedness] sometimes until something happens and we're not prepared, so we certainly want to be prepared," Ducro said. "Our EMA does an excellent job of coordinating these exercises."
This week's event is out of the ordinary, since it is focused on a hostile action, Ducro said.
"But we did a dry run for the exercise, and it seemed to go fairly smoothly," he said.
The dry run took place in August, and was conducted in the same way the official exercise, Fitchet said at the time.
