Today's Washington Post has an article on national level exercises. National disaster exercises, called too costly and scripted, may be scaled back has an interesting number of quotes and commentary in it.
First is this one, "Once in her current office, Napolitano talked about streamlining the drills and scaling them back to restore surprise. "When you have months to prepare for an exercise . . . a large part of the exercise's value is lost," she wrote." Well I can't say I agree with her on this particular point. In my experience, the preparation that goes into conducting the exercise is precisely the most valuable part of the entire event. The prep work that brings people and organizations together to sort out who does what and when is exactly what is needed. The exercise itself can be anti-climatic. I recommend that she send her quotes over to FEMA before putting stuff like the above out there for people to read.
The point is made that the National Level Exercises (NLE) are too scripted can come from two different points of view. It could come from an untrained observer seeing a Major Scenario Events List (MSEL) and not understanding the exercise design process that looks to exercise those portions of a disaster plan that the participating organizations want to test. Or, it could come from the fact that people and organizations are afraid of failure and so they "cheat" by letting the players know when and where things are going to happen. The NLE (formerly known as the TOP Officials Exercises) are high visibility events and elected officials and senior appointed officials don't want to be seen as being inept in how they respond to an emergency. Thus exercise designers pass along information to players. In the military it use to be called G2'ing (intelligence gathering) the exercise.
The exercises are expensive, no doubt about that. Much of the money goes to contractors who assist with the exercise design process and then to the players who have to bring people in on overtime (which is not cheap when you are talking fire and police) to participate in the exercise. This is particularly true for full scale exercises.
The article mentions no-notice exercises. I've seen this work in the Army, but I don't know how that would work with a full scale exercise in the civilian sector. There are events that go on all the time that need to be attended to. Inserting an "unknown" event into the middle of someone's day can be very messy. Not to mention that if it is full scale, then there is no warning to the public or media about what will be occurring.
Dealing with the feds is another matter. They want to involve the state and local entities in the exercise--but they have had trouble in treating them as equal players when it comes time to sort through who does what and what gets exercised. The word collaboration can be thrown around a lot, when really it is about informing and coordination. Partnership is still a reach when it comes to these exercises.
The positive about the exercises is it is the only time that the full spectrum of response forces and organizations from the federal, state and local levels play together. It is important that we do that before we get into the big game (disaster) and have never practiced together before an actual event.
Bill Cumming shared the link above.
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First is this one, "Once in her current office, Napolitano talked about streamlining the drills and scaling them back to restore surprise. "When you have months to prepare for an exercise . . . a large part of the exercise's value is lost," she wrote." Well I can't say I agree with her on this particular point. In my experience, the preparation that goes into conducting the exercise is precisely the most valuable part of the entire event. The prep work that brings people and organizations together to sort out who does what and when is exactly what is needed. The exercise itself can be anti-climatic. I recommend that she send her quotes over to FEMA before putting stuff like the above out there for people to read.
The point is made that the National Level Exercises (NLE) are too scripted can come from two different points of view. It could come from an untrained observer seeing a Major Scenario Events List (MSEL) and not understanding the exercise design process that looks to exercise those portions of a disaster plan that the participating organizations want to test. Or, it could come from the fact that people and organizations are afraid of failure and so they "cheat" by letting the players know when and where things are going to happen. The NLE (formerly known as the TOP Officials Exercises) are high visibility events and elected officials and senior appointed officials don't want to be seen as being inept in how they respond to an emergency. Thus exercise designers pass along information to players. In the military it use to be called G2'ing (intelligence gathering) the exercise.
The exercises are expensive, no doubt about that. Much of the money goes to contractors who assist with the exercise design process and then to the players who have to bring people in on overtime (which is not cheap when you are talking fire and police) to participate in the exercise. This is particularly true for full scale exercises.
The article mentions no-notice exercises. I've seen this work in the Army, but I don't know how that would work with a full scale exercise in the civilian sector. There are events that go on all the time that need to be attended to. Inserting an "unknown" event into the middle of someone's day can be very messy. Not to mention that if it is full scale, then there is no warning to the public or media about what will be occurring.
Dealing with the feds is another matter. They want to involve the state and local entities in the exercise--but they have had trouble in treating them as equal players when it comes time to sort through who does what and what gets exercised. The word collaboration can be thrown around a lot, when really it is about informing and coordination. Partnership is still a reach when it comes to these exercises.
The positive about the exercises is it is the only time that the full spectrum of response forces and organizations from the federal, state and local levels play together. It is important that we do that before we get into the big game (disaster) and have never practiced together before an actual event.
Bill Cumming shared the link above.
