MARIES COUNTY — The Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) hosted storm damage training on May 24 through May 26 at Spring Creek Gap Conservation Area.

Spring Creek Gap is a 1,816-acre area on Old Highway 63 between Vichy and Vienna. It includes several hiking trails.

“April 15 the tornado came through,” Maries County’s MDC Agent Tex Rabenau said. “It created havoc on the conservation area. It made all the hiking trails pretty dangerous with downed trees. We closed some of the hiking trails until they could get in and do some of the preliminary clean up.”

So many trees had fallen at Spring Creek Gap that MDC decided to use the clean-up activity as a day to train employees on how to safely handle fallen or damaged tree debris.

“It’s very dangerous work,” Rabenau said. “We don’t have power lines (at the conservation area), but there are a lot of hazards to mitigate to make sure the public is safe.”

Tree debris poses the most risk. If a tree crosses a trail, it could create a trip hazard. Other trees could have tangled branches hanging loose and ready to fall.

“You never know when they’re going to fall or when that’s going to give way, so that creates another hazard, which could result in death if not taken seriously, especially since Spring Creek Gap gets very heavy use,” Rabenau said.

Once MDC decided to use the clean-up as a training opportunity, it began to coordinate the activity as a statewide effort. Planning included developing an incident management system, which structures the event’s command team.

“It keeps everybody safe,” Rabenau said. “There’s one person in charge, and it’s kind of like a pyramid.”

He said the incident commander, who would be at the top of the pyramid, leads the response efforts. MDC Crew Leader Nathen Morfeld was the incident commander at Spring Creek Gap. Then, the response team divides into branches that each have their own leaders. Each branch has a specific role in the response. Rabenau, who is a paramedic and retired from working as a firefighter, was the safety officer.

“Not only is it dangerous to work in that type of atmosphere, (but) it’s also dangerous to do that type of training as well,” he said.

As part of the planning for the training, crews even created two different landing zones for helicopters at or near Spring Creek Gap in case medical helicopters needed to make an emergency landing because of an accident on-site. Rabenau said it was just precautionary. No one was hurt during the training.

The instructor for the training was Joe Glenn, who runs Joe Glenn’s Timber Harvest Training out of Wayne County. Rabenau said Glenn taught a classroom portion of the course at the Vichy Volunteer Fire Department (VVFD) firehouse before the group went to train at Spring Creek Gap. Members of the VVFD and the nonprofit conservation organization Quail Forever joined MDC crews for the training. About 25 people participated in the training.

During the classroom part of the training, the crews learned proper techniques for sawing trees and bringing them down safely. They also learned the best ways to use chainsaws to reduce hazards.

“It wasn’t like they sent out a lot of people with chainsaws and said ‘Okay, just go do work,’” Rabenau said. “They wanted to make sure everybody was on the same page. If there was a really dangerous type of situation, they gathered everybody around and showed them how to tackle that particular problem.”

Once the training moved to Spring Creek Gap, the trainees split into three different branches that each completed separate tasks in separate parts of the conservation area. Equipment used in the clean-up included chainsaws, two bulldozers and four skid steers with grapples.

“At the end of the day, nobody got hurt, the task at hand was completed and all the trails are open to the public,” Rabenau said. “The public is going to see some downed trees still, but the trails themselves are all safe.”