We’re wrapping up a week of Incident Command training here in Oklahoma City. This week’s ICS 420 involved training a variety of agencies from across the country.

• USDA
o Office of Homeland Security
• USDA APHIS VS
• Multistate Partnership for Security in Agriculture (MSPSA)
• MSPSA State Departments of Agriculture
o Illinois Department of Agriculture
o Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship
o Kansas Department of Agriculture
o Kentucky Department of Agriculture
o Michigan Department of Agriculture
o Minnesota Department of Agriculture
o Missouri Department of Agriculture
o Nebraska Department of Agriculture
o Ohio Department of Agriculture
o Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry
o Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection
• MSPSA State Boards of Animal Health/Industry
o Minnesota Board of Animal Health
o Kansas Board of Animal Health
• MSPSA State Departments of Emergency Management/Homeland Security
o Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management
o Oklahoma Office of Homeland Security
• Other State Agencies
o Oklahoma National Guard

If you would like to know a little more about last month’s Stop Animal Movement exercise, Oklahoma Horizon television did a great job covering it. Their reporters were at both the ODAFF building and onsite with us north of Turpin to observe how our inspectors and staff worked with law enforcement and emergency management.

Click here for the full video coverage.

Last week’s joint Stop Animal Movement exercise with the state of Kansas was a mulit-state, multi-agency task that really tested our preparedness for an animal disease outbreak. We’re still waiting to see how the third-party evaluators rated our performance but we’re confident the exercise was an overall success.

The Association Press ran a story about the exercise and you can view it here.

Our thanks to our counterparts in Kansas but especially to the Oklahoma Emergency Management teams, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, the Beaver County Sheriff’s Department, the city of Turpin, and the Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management team that not only made this possible financially, but helped brave the cold with us.

Last week Congressman Dan Boren traveled to Tupelo, OK (that’s about 20 miles south of Ada, if you didn’t know) to present Secretary Peach and state representative Paul Roan with the deed to a maintenance facility once owned by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Pictured above is Congressman Boren presenting the deed to Secretary Peach and Mr. Roan at a small dedication ceremony at the facility. We have the complete story here about how this came about and how the facility will ultimately be used.

This agency’s efforts to train and prepare for wildfire, natural disasters and even agricultural terrorists are well documented and have inspired other state and federal agencies to follow suit. Our staff have become known not only for their expertise in dealing with these types of crisis, but also for their ability to train others to do the same.

Today I found a news feature online (Timesonline) written by an entomologist and university professor in Wyoming, Jeffrey A. Lockwood, who recounts a few instances in history when insects actually changed the course of history and speculates they will do so again. The article is titled, “Could ecoterrorists let slip the bugs of war?”

This paragraph was particularly thought provoking and serves to remind us why continued training and vigilance is so important to the safety of our agricultural industries and our food supply:

“The best “homeland defence” is flourishing human and agricultural health systems that can detect and deal with whatever comes in. Such an infrastructure would pay for itself. Even without terrorists, new diseases and insect pests will continue to arrive.”–Jeffrey A. Lockwood

–Jack Carson

Beginning Sunday night over 60 people from at least 10 states will begin some of the most intense Incident Command System training available. This is a six-day training session that is sponsored by the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food, and Forestry in partnership with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture and the Multistate Partnership for Security in Agriculture.

The agency press release provides more details and is available here.

In case you are not aware of what ICS is, it was developed by the U.S. Forest Service for coordinating massive firefighting efforts many years ago.

Since then it has been adapted for everything from political events to acts of terrorism. The Oklahoma agriculture department’s Forestry Services Division has used the system for many years and in 2002 the agency as a whole adopted the program to prepare for natural disasters, animal disease outbreaks (especially Foreign Animal Diseases), and other things.