Video: Clay County Emergency Management Agency Safety Workshop

[syndicaster id=’5858898′] WEST POINT, Miss. (WCBI) — Safety is key anytime a town hosts a large festival.

Prairie Arts is just a few weeks away in West Point.

Today, emergency responders prepare for a disaster while thousands of people are in town. A train derailment in downtown West Point would be disastrous during the annual festival.

That’s why the Clay County Emergency Management Agency wants to be prepared. Should the worst happen.

In this training scenario, a train carrying the colorless gas vinyl chloride is off the tracks.

“It is a serious chemical and what we did was we revolved our exercise around that to kind of think and go through the situation and the roles of what we would do in a train derailment,” said EMA Director Kerrie Gentry-Blassard.

Clay County EMA threw in another challenge to this exercise on Wednesday.

Trains carrying this toxic gas go through West Point two or three times a day.

If one derails during the Prairie Arts Festival, nearly 30 thousand visitors from across the state would be in danger.

“We knew that it was a major event for West Point and Clay County and this was a situation that could possibly occur, so we just wanted to kind of correlate the two and see what we would do in this type of situation,” Blassard said.
Every agency that would respond to this type of situation is taking part, to learn more about how they can work as a team to keep everyone safe when disaster strikes.

“Communication is everything. If you don’t have communication you don’t have anything,” said MEMA Exercise Officer Brian Maske.

“Hopefully we won’t ever have to use this but we will be prepared,” said Blassard.

Clay County hosts regular training sessions throughout the year for first responders.

This year’s annual Prairie Arts Festival will be September 5th.