The old saying goes “prior planning prevents poor performance.” And what is true of music recitals is true (and even more so) of preparing for the response to a natural or man-made disaster.
When disaster strikes, a large number of resources need to be mobilized. The larger the disaster, the more resources are needed, and the greater the need for coordination. But given how infrequent large-scale disasters are (thankfully!) we don’t have a lot of practice with that sort of coordination.
The Federal government runs a robust training and exercise program that models disaster response by having all the players respond to a hypothetical disaster. They run both small regional programs and, annually, a National Level Exercise that models a major catastrophe. This year, NLE 2011 is an exercise that asks “what would happen if we had a major earthquake along the New Madrid fault line in the Midwest?” The three-day exercise is scheduled to begin today.
The exercise is designed to test a range of government and private sector functions including: Communications, Logistics, Mass Care, Medical Surge Capacity, Evacuation, Emergency Public Information and Warning, and the activation of an Emergency Operations Center. Participants will include the Federal government, eight states, dozens of local governments and the private sector. When exercises like this are done right, they identify gaps and overlaps, produce operational familiarity and develop useful relationships.
As useful as planning and exercises are, sometimes reality intrudes. Many States in the Midwest are in the middle of dealing with an historic flood of the Mississippi. Others are still recovering from recent devastating tornadoes. So even though “the show must go on” it will have to go on without them.
Instead of joining the national exercise with first responders simulating their activities, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi will have to play the game virtually, sitting around a table making decisions; they’re busy dealing with real life.
The rest of the states will play the game, responding to a simulated disaster, as if an earthquake had actually occurred.
Meanwhile their colleagues in the South will go about the grim business of responding to the real disasters of tornadoes and flooding — and in their own way, demonstrating why planning and exercises are so vital.
