My Texan of the Year entry: The life-savers at A&M’s Disaster City

The many (and I mean many) submissions we receive to nominate people for the Dallas Morning News Texan of the Year tend to weigh very heavily on the local side. It’s important for readers to understand that this isn’t a local recognition for purely local work. If a homeless shelter in Dallas is doing great work, that’s wonderful. But homeless shelters in Austin, Houston, Lubbock and El Paso also do great work and deserve recognition as well. What we’re looking for is an exceptional example of impact that would be recognizable across the state and even nationally or internationally.

My nomination goes to the Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service for its creation of Disaster City. This is a 52-acre site where engineers and first responders work to re-create the scenes they’ve encountered in disasters. They re-create train wrecks, refinery explosions, neighborhoods flattened by tornadoes, earthquakes, oil spills, airline accidents. Then they teach first responders from around the country how to handle those situations and save lives.

I’ve known Disaster City existed, but I wasn’t aware of its national impact. Take a look at the course catalog to see what I mean. Tens of thousands of first responders have trained at the site. And training is essential. You have to know what you’re doing before disaster strikes in order to respond effectively and work quickly to save lives. If you don’t know exactly what you’re doing, as the first responders in West learned, you can actually cost people their lives even while you’re making a heroic effort.

The folks at Disaster City make a huge impact all over the country, and they continue to refine their scenarios and introduce new ones (such as one potentially involving Ebola responses) to remain current with today’s challenges. That’s exceptional stuff.