A comprehensive 354-page emergency response plan for the City of Dyersburg was unveiled at city hall Monday for members of the public safety committee.

Tommy Gibbons, emergency management director for the city, delivered copies of the document to the mayor and committee members present. The plan, which was four months in the making, was designed to cover every conceivable emergency, from a chemical spill on the interstate involving a tractor-trailer rig to a terrorist attack.

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"For a city of about 20,000, we are well ahead of the game in terms of emergency preparedness," said Gibbons. "We had all the right equipment and all the necessary players, we just had to organize them, and that is what our emergency response plan has been designed to do."

Gibbons said that in the months following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Mayor Bill Revell pressed hard for a detailed plan that could be used to train city and emergency services personnel to handle a major disaster, whether natural or man made.

In April, Revell authorized the formation of a new city department to deal exclusively with emergency situations. Gibbons, formerly with the fire department, was asked to focus exclusively on emergency management issues and improve the city's preparedness in the event of a disaster. Captain Mark Grant, who served with the Dyersburg Police Department, was given the task of revamping and upgrading the city's public safety communications and radio systems.

Gibbons said that before employees could be trained in the various departments, there had to be a general road map for everyone to follow. That is what the emergency response plan is designed to do.

"We didn't try to reinvent the wheel," Gibbons said. "We consulted with the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. We used the same format as you would find in Memphis or Nashville."

As massive as the plan may be, Gibbons explained that individuals who work for various city departments or with privately owned emergency service companies are only expected to know their parts, not the entire program.

He said that when an emergency situation develops, organization among respondents is the key to successfully containing a crisis.

"This identifies roles and responsibilities of city and emergency agencies throughout the region when a crisis occurs. It identifies who is the primary agency in charge and which groups work as support agencies."

In addition to the general plan, Gibbons said he has also compiled a resource manual that contains telephone numbers for companies and agencies that might be called upon in the event of a disaster. He learned from contacting other emergency response departments across the state and nation how detailed that list had to be.

"As terrible as this might be to consider, think about what would happen if you had mass casualties during 90-degree weather. You couldn't just store bodies under a tent."

The resource manual includes telephone numbers for vendors that could provide mobile refrigerated morgues in a matter of hours.

Gibbons is already looking ahead to holding "tabletop exercises" with city departments. Employees will use the citywide emergency plan as a basis for addressing hypothetical disasters.