By LINDA DAVIS
Contra Costa Times
Leaders at the San Ramon Valley fire district spent the past week battling blazes, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes in the imaginary Latin American country of Costa Ricardo, all for the sake of training.
This latest round of continuing education in dealing with disasters took the leaders “out of their comfort zone,” said Mark Smith, a facilitator for Colorado-based Mission-Centered Solutions, which ran the program.
Participants were immersed in the culture, finance and topography of the fictitious country, down to using its money to pay for supplies and getting around the language barrier.
Most everyone was called upon to do role-playing. In one scenario, Battalion Chief Bert Byers became Father Francisco de la Vega, padre of a village in Costa Ricardo. Vega burst in on the command post and pleaded for firefighters to save his 500-year-old church and its cemetery, which contained historic gravestones.
Holed up in the district headquarters’ kitchen, incident team members mulled over maps of Costa Ricardo, its structures, schools and roads. Communicating by walkie-talkie to the command post set up in a conference room nearby, the fire officials took their duties seriously. Nary a snicker broke out when the burly Byers donned his priest outfit and strode out of the room, reading over his “script.”
Incident commanders also had to deal with the possibility of workers stranded on Oscar Garcia’s orange farm and hysterical women from the “village.”
Smith, a former military man, said “high risk creates emotion. There are human dynamics no matter where you are. You use the triage mentality to get things done. You can’t lose your humanity.”
The idea of the workshop was to use stress as a training tool, Battalion Chief Mike Brown said.
“The course is unique. You go, then you stop and talk about it, step by step,” Brown said.
Chiefs down to captains, even the district finance director, broke into three rotating teams during the weeklong exercises. One team manned the command post, another was on the disaster scene while the third observed, Brown said. Then they all switched places.
While there are no volcanoes in the San Ramon Valley, sometimes teams are sent to help in Mexico, or other areas devastated by volcanoes or other disasters that don’t occur at home. Brown and another official recently were dispatched to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina by organizing the roles of various social service agencies, such as the Salvation Army.
The $20,000 course was part of ongoing leadership training, Brown said. Its mission is to promote teamwork, adaptability and communication between supervisors and those on the front lines.
Brown said he has used the company -- which teaches such sessions worldwide -- before because of its innovative techniques and presentation.
“This is a hard class, not a speed race,” Brown said. “It requires stamina and keeping the focus.”
And, he added, “We do have earthquakes here.”