Emergency Management Agencies Team Up To Prepare For The Worst Case Scenarios

Several agencies got together last week to brainstorm about a worst case scenario that would have officials scrambling from Truman Dam all the way to Jefferson City…and beyond.

Camden County Emergency Management Director Samantha Henley says the tabletop exercise focused on what would happen downstream in the case of a controlled high release.

“They were looking at about 284,000 CFS, which is if Truman was completely full and they opened all four floodgate all the way open, it would have the same devastating effect that a failure would have.”

Henley also tells KRMS News that another main focus of the exercise dealt with communication efforts between those involved.

“Getting the information from the army corps out to Benton County and to Camden County and continuing it all the way down to the Missouri River at Jeff City was really the focus of what they wanted to do, because, as we’ve seen in many exercises, communications is the first thing that fails.”

Among the agencies participating in the tabletop were: several different EMA’s, Ameren, the highway patrol’s water patrol division, MoDOT and the Army Corps of Engineers.