Alamogordo Fire Department trains for emergencies

Up to 6 inches of rain hits Alamogordo with flooding happening on the southeast side of town or 50 mph winds suddenly popping up during the fireworks extravaganza then causes a fire in the desert area east of the New Mexico Museum of Space History.

It was just two of the many scenarios played out during Alamogordo Fire Department’s tabletop Incident Command Management training at Fire Station No. 5 Monday.

Fire Chief Mikel Ward said its continued fire department officers and command staff training.

“We make sure all of our officers receive training specific to incident command and control,” Ward said. “We brought Lincoln County Fire Marshal to train specifically on incidents of flood around the city and wildfire off Thunder Road with mutual aid from the county.”

He said it’s for Alamogordo fire officers to work on their thought process in running incident command and those issues.

“It preps them for when an incident happens,” Ward said. “They’ve already thought through what they need to do. What their operational requirements are during an incident. It gives them the chance to experience an incident beforehand so when we do get another one of these, they’re prepared and they know this is the right way to handle it.”

He said it’s important to keep the officers prepared for emergency incidents.

“In real life we only get a few minutes to make these kinds of decisions,” Ward said. “It’s a good opportunity to make the mistakes in training so they don’t make the mistakes in a real life situation. I know residents are afraid of the flooding. I want them to know we’re prepared and ready when it does come.”

Lincoln County Fire Marshal and Emergency Services Coordinator Spencer Baldwin conducted the tabletop training on a Simtable that Lincoln County acquired after the Little Bear fire.

The Simtable is a large box filled with finely crushed walnut shells. Baldwin projected a GPS map through an overhead projector that’s powered by a laptop. It’s able to simulate rainfall, flooding and wildfires. The sand-like mixture can be pushed and formed into mountains, valleys, rivers and lakes to create a three-dimensional image for emergency incident management training.

Baldwin said he was training personnel on incident command and control of the incident.

“It’s our main objective,” he said. “I can create a wildland fire or make flooding occur. We’re trying to teach them overall the picture in how do we take care of the citizens.”

Baldwin created scenarios in the southeast area of town-Marble Canyon, Scenic Drive, and Thunder Road to 10th Street over to Indian Wells Road.

“It’s not exact but the more people train on it, they can keep it in the back of their mind on what road they can use,” he said.