Imagine a completely unforeseen nightmare scenario, like an explosion at the courthouse. Let’s say, while it wasn’t during the middle of the workday, people were in the building, and there were 12 deaths as a result.

That was the scenario Brandan Cowan, San Juan County Department of Emergency Management, came up with for an exercise on Nov. 12 with county leadership.

“The value of this exercise is that it shows that rather than having a specific ‘plan’ for every individual scenario or emergency, we have a system in place that is designed to be flexible and scalable and able to nimbly respond to any number of crises,” Cowan told the Journal. Emergency response, he explained, requires real flexibility and creativity on the part of leadership and staff, forcing the organization to operate far out of its usual comfort zone. Practicing this is useful for emergency preparedness, but also for helping to foster a culture of innovation and problem-solving within the organization.

The exercise took place at the Fairgrounds in the Marie Boe Building. Employees were broken into groups as they worked through this horrific scenario.

Temporary holding facilities for the auditor, assessor and Sheriff’s Office needed to be established. They were moved to the Fairgrounds. Traffic around the impacted area needed to be diverted, and crowds needed to be directed away from the area while air quality was assessed.

The exercise included a press briefing. Those designated as journalists were provided a list of questions and told to be aggressive and, if not mean, not to smile.

“Yesterday we suffered a serious explosion at our courthouse, which injured multiple people and left 12 people deceased,” Council Chair Kari McVeigh told the crowd pretending to be journalists. “We are not able to get the names of those people until all of their families have been notified. I’m proud to say that the county has come together to create an incident command center where we are looking at all the different parts of what needs to transpire to make sure that people who work in the county and the people who live in the Town of Friday Harbor can continue to be safe.” She also clarified that it is unknown who is responsible, and an investigation is underway.

Brandon Andrews, San Juan County Fair director, acted as the public information officer.

Andrews told the journalists that the staff will be operating with the greatest care, empathy and urgency, and that “we know through these fatalities families have become separated and there is an area for reunification at the middle school.”

“A press release is going out that provides you all with the contact information and details for that facility, and for grief counseling,” Andrews said.

Jessica Hudson, county manager, served as commander, while Mark Tompkins acted as operations manager.

“I want to assure everyone that while we are going through this process, we also know we have to work to keep government functioning. We have obligations to our citizens and islanders to make sure that critical services are functioning,” Hudson told the journalists, before opening up the briefing to questions.

The acting journalists blurted questions out, even speaking over each other occasionally, to keep the panel on their toes. One asked for the names and addresses of the deceased, which the panel declined to give for obvious reasons.

Another asked about the expense and how much money was in the County emergency fund. That was unknown at the time of the briefing.

One journalist asked why families had apparently not been contacted yet. The response was that they were still working with emergency services on a full accounting.

The panel members kept their cool as the questions volleyed forth, until it closed with the statement that, because the situation is evolving, and an investigation is underway, daily briefings were scheduled at 5 p.m.

Key takeaways, Cowan told the Journal later, included the importance of departments working together and building relationships before an event, not after; the need to have off-site non-digital backups of the most critical information needed to resume essential services; and for ongoing efforts to diversify information technology systems and locations, increasing resiliency and flexibility.

And finally, the “Desire to do more exercises of this nature!” Cowan said.

Heather Spaulding/staff photo. Kari McVeigh listens to Brendan Andrews.