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The Hidalgo County Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC) wants to ensure that the general public is aware of a planned drill, scheduled to take place Wednesday morning in McAllen.
Multiple law enforcement agencies will participate in a full-scale hazmat scenario drill at the Sharyland Water Supply Corporation Water Treatment Plant 2, located at 12200 North Ware Road.
“We are exercising the scene of a hazardous materials release,” said Hidalgo County LEPC Chair and city of Alton Fire Chief Gus Ramirez.
The organization is partnering with the Sharyland Water Supply Corporation to stage a chlorine release and test the Emergency Response Plan (ERP) should there be a real hazardous material incident in the future.
“There’s going to be multiple organizations responding, and we just don’t want to create any type of panic,” Ramirez said. “We want the public to know that there is an exercise happening there, and obviously the intent of that is for us to be able to mitigate the incident and work together to pretty much just bring the incident to a safe area.”
The participating agencies and organizations include the McAllen Fire Department, Pharr Fire Department, Alton Fire Department, Edinburg Fire Department, Mission Fire Department, Hidalgo County Emergency Management, and the Texas Department of Emergency Management.
“We’re going to practice stopping the release, so we just don’t want the public to panic thinking that it is an actual incident and nobody’s told them about it,” Ramirez said.
He said that the drill is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m., and it is estimated to continue for around three hours.
