Imagine a completely unforeseen nightmare scenario, like an explosion at the courthouse. Let’s say, while it wasn’t during the middle of the workday, people were in the building, and there were 12 deaths as a result.

That was the scenario Brandan Cowan, San Juan County Department of Emergency Management, came up with for an exercise on Nov. 12 with county leadership.

“The value of this exercise is that it shows that rather than having a specific ‘plan’ for every individual scenario or emergency, we have a system in place that is designed to be flexible and scalable and able to nimbly respond to any number of crises,” Cowan told the Journal. Emergency response, he explained, requires real flexibility and creativity on the part of leadership and staff, forcing the organization to operate f

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