Practicing With Saratoga Days

This year’s Saratoga Days appeared to be a success as Southern Fryed, Los Cheesies and Lita Ford brought each of their own musical stylings to downtown Saratoga on July 6.

As this event has grown over the years, from one with local and regional artists to nationally known talent, so has the planning and response from law enforcement and first responders. This year, Saratoga Police Chief Mike Morris worked closely with both the Saratoga Days Committee as well as Stayton Mosby, director of the South Central Wyoming Emergency Medical Services, and Lenny Layman, Carbon County Office of Emergency Management.

Practice Makes Perfect

“In my professional opinion, everything rises and falls on leadership,” said Layman. “We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for his [Chief Mike Morris] vision to expand and bring in some of the other key agencies. That’s not always a common thing.”

A critical part of that planning, according to Layman, comes down to the Incident Action Plan.

“It's an Incident Command System that captures everything about the incident. The incident, in this case, was a planned event. In that, we document the different roles that we each play, it documents a communications plan, it documents a medical plan,” said Layman. “I was asked to play the role of the liaison, which meant I would work with outside agencies, meaning anything not Saratoga. So I would work with Homeland Security if we needed to bring in resources from Rawlins. If something bad happened within Saratoga Days, we wouldn’t have to question who would do what, we had planned that out through the IAP.”

Now, with Saratoga Days over, Layman said the IAP for this year can be archived and used as a “jumping off point” for next year’s event. According to Morris, constructing an IAP for an event like Saratoga Days also served as good practice for an unplanned event whether that be a natural disaster or a made-made event.

“When you’re able to do something like this with a planned event, if we have an unplanned event, you’re thinking about it already because you know some of the things you’ve done and could do,” said Morris. “Just like anything else, you’re going to perform as you practice. Even though it’s a valid plan and a working plan, it was also practice.”

Using Your Resources

With an event like Saratoga Days, there was a combination of seen and unseen work put into making sure it went as safely as possible.

This year, dynamic signs from the Wyoming Department of Transportation were placed on the north and south ends of 1st Street with another one from the Carbon County Office of Emergency Management on the east end of Bridge Avenue the day of the event. The Saratoga Police Department also used three speed trailers—which show the posted speed limit and feedback the driver’s speed—with one of them on loan from the Encampment Police Department.

That, however, was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to interagency cooperation.

“[The] North Platte Valley Medical Center was in on the planning, so they were aware a large event was going to occur. Should something bad have happened, we had some change of normal flow through the emergency room. So they talked about that on their end. I feel like they had a pretty good plan,” said Mosby. “They were also included in the communications so they could hear the event and all the traffic that was occurring there. We had plans for radio communications between the hospital and the event, should we overload a cell phone network or it’s not working for some reason, to ensure they understood what patients were coming to their facility.”

To be included within the communications, the Saratoga Police Department utilized two dispatchers during Saratoga Days with one at the dispatch center and another at the medical center.

“Through emergency management, we were able to get two additional radios that are easily deployed. We were able to put one of those up at dispatch [and] put one of those up at North Platte Valley Medical Center as well,” said Morris. “Even though we didn’t utilize it, we actually had a mobile repeater we got from the Carbon County Fire Protection District.”

Those resources went beyond the Platte Valley as well, according to Mosby.

“We’re a part of the Central Wyoming Healthcare Coalition and they have a lot of assets and equipment and people they can help activate in the event of a disaster. We exercised activating them a little bit with a fake scenario we sent out,” said Mosby. “We said ‘Hey, we’ve got this many patients. Give me a resource count.’ It was a good test because it’s a Saturday, it’s a holiday weekend. People are out camping and having fun and not necessarily ready to pick up the phone like they were in the office. It was a good exercise for that.”

Can You Hear Me Now?

Among the unseen aspects of the planning for Saratoga Days were some programs through the Carbon County Office of Emergency Management: Orion Mobile and Salamander Systems.

“Orion Mobile is the damage assessment software that I get at the county level,” said Layman. “For example, if a big tornado came through, the tool allows you—on a mobile device—to capture the damage from house-to-house or building-to-building. It also has a function of preplanning, so we used it for preplanning.”

Part of that preplanning included taking pictures of downtown Saratoga after the vendors and stage had been set up. Those photos were then uploaded to Orion Mobile and archived for use in next year’s planning along with the IAP and after action review.

The Salamander System, meanwhile, allowed the police department to track which personnel worked the event and went.

“All of Saratoga PD is credentialed, all of SCWEMS is credentialed. We set up a check in, check out through the ID systems,” said Layman. “Those officers and medical personnel that were working the event and, at the end, we produced a report.. to the chief and, once again, got archived on Orion Mobile.”

The final piece of software was AlertSense, an opt-in emergency alert program brought to Carbon County Emergency Management by Layman. The system typically provides alerts to users about potential threats such as natural disasters. In the case of Saratoga Days, however, it also provided specific messaging related to the event ranging from reminders of events to potential dangers during the event. According to Layman, approximately 147 people opted-in for Saratoga Days messaging.

Better To Have It and Not Need It

With Saratoga Days in the rearview mirror, all three men commented on the success of the planning for this year’s event. There were three medical calls, two of which refused medical attention, four law enforcement calls and one citation related to the event.

“Whenever you get that many people having a really good time, I feel extremely lucky that we didn’t deal with anything major,” said Morris.

Morris also said there was at least one comment about the amount of emergency personnel at the event and whether it was too much. According to the chief, he would much rather have those personnel and not need them than need them and not have them.

Layman echoed those sentiments, saying if the only value which came from planning to use these resources was that they practiced for an unplanned event, it was worth it.