By Kristin Buehner, Mason City Globe Gazette

NORTHWOOD — Northwood city officials decided Monday to update the city’s emergency operation plan following lessons learned during the evacuation of the community Feb. 20.

The city of 2,000 was evacuated after an explosion at the Northwood AG Products fertilizer storage facility. The explosion and subsequent fire raised fears that toxic fumes could be blown across the town.

“We’re very happy no one was hurt,” Mayor Jane Bloomingdale said, following a work session with the City Council and representatives of the Sheriff’s department, emergency management, the school district and the Lutheran Retirement Home.

But the meeting was called to “nit pick” and determine what they all could have done better.

As mayor, Bloomingdale served as public information officer at an improvised command center during the event. She said communications could have been better, including getting news out to the media.

“We need to continually put out new information as we have it,” she said.

She and others also cited the need to come up with a location for the incident command center that is outside of town.

Worth County Emergency Management Coordinator Ray Huftalin said the county supervisors are considering a proposal to construct a new building to house the County Conservation Board and an Emergency Operations Center.

“I hope the people of Worth County support it,” he said.

The building would be located east of Kensett.

Huftalin said he thought the evacuation went well overall. “It never goes exactly like it does on paper.”

But he agreed there were some details that could have been handled better.

“We needed more communication from incident command to the evacuees to cut down on rumors,” he said.

False information got out, for example, that the fire was releasing sulfuric acid into the air.

Arrangements should have been made for porta potties, Huftalin said. He also advised the council to address how to handle pets, since some people refused to leave their homes without their pets.

He emphasized, too, the importance of citizens making their own family emergency plans and emergency kits.

Councilwoman Rhonda Taylor observed “it didn’t take more than 20 minutes to half an hour” to get everybody out that could get out.

“They just got in their cars and they left.”

Dan Fank, chief deputy for the Worth County Sheriff’s Department, cited issues such as emergency personnel working on the evacuation without protective equipment. “Some had a hard time breathing,” he said.

He also stressed the need to have a checklist of actions for officials to use during a disaster and plan to eliminate redundancy.

“There’s just a lot of little things we’ve got to address,” he said.

Although the evacuation happened on a day when school was not in session, Superintendent Michael Crozier said that if the students and staff would have to have been evacuated, it would have taken more than one trip, even with the 11 district school buses.

From talks he has had since with other superintendents in the area, no one has plans that would involve transporting students out of town, Crozier said.

Scott Halbach, administrator of the Lutheran Retirement Home, said his staff began triaging residents soon after arriving at the Kensett community center to determine if any needed to be moved to a setting that could better accommodate their needs.

The approximately 100 residents were moved with their medications to the evacuation site, he said.

Huftalin said he is planning an incident command class for all City Council members and county supervisors in Worth and Mitchell counties that will talk about the roles and responsibilities of elected officials.

“I encourage all of you to take it.”