SAFETY
Security at Kennewick Irrigation District by Shelbea Voelker
KID’s new building.
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A third part of KID’s training program is a tabletop exercise for leadership staff who would be directly involved in an emergency such as a canal breach. The exercise ensures that each staff member understands his or her role and the communication that would need to take place during such a situation. It also provides an opportunity to practice using KID’s disaster manual. During the Shelbea Voelker, public relations corrdinator at exercise, staff adopted the Kennewick Irrigation District. roles that they would play in an emergency, including incident commander, public information officer, liaison officer, safety officer, operations section chief, and finance/ administrative section chief, and learned about the tasks appropriate to each position. This exercise helped KID management identify any weak spots in the district’s organizational structure, in its internal communication, and in its communication with public saftey agencies. As a follow-up to the tabletop exercise, KID developed an emergency-response trailer structured for emergency IRRIGATION LEADER
PHOTOS COURTESY OF KENNWICK IRRIGATION DISTRICT.
t Kennewick Irrigation District (KID), security is top of mind. In recent years, the district has participated in several staff safety trainings and implemented important new safety measures in its new building. KID has twice hosted Officer Philip Ball, a policetraining specialist and owner of the Situational Awareness Institute, to train KID staff on active-shooter prevention and survival and verbal de-escalation. These training sessions educate employees on the importance of safety and how to stay protected during a crisis. The activeshooter training teaches staff what characteristics and signs to look for in a potential active shooter, how to report the problem, how to stay protected while waiting for authorities, and what the authorities will do when arriving to the workplace to ensure staff safety. The verbal de-escalation portion of this training teaches staff how to speak to an upset or angry customer in a way that will help calm them down. In the past, customers have become angry over malfunctioning irrigation systems or because they have not understood how their system works; these situations have sometimes escalated to yelling. In the exercise, each employee has to practice calming down the trainer, who plays the role of the angry customer. At the end, the trainer provides feedback and tips, such as what words to use or not to use when calming down a customer.
