Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Exercise Conduct
At the day of the exercise, participants are asked to sign in, use name cards, and
sit at tables labeled for their particular agency, including fire and police, state gov-
ernment and emergency management, public health, environmental and critical
infrastructure (communications, transportation, and utilities).
As described in the agenda, you introduce the exercise, the objectives and goals,
the rules that will be followed in the exercise (when questions will be asked, who
will be able to speak, when breaks and lunch will be taken), how injects will be
used, how messages will be passed from one group to another, and the goals of the
exercise. The participants may address the injects either through sending written
messages to other tables or by making a general announcement to all the groups
and simulate a conference call.
The facilitator asks the participants to make notes in the SITMAN and to docu-
ment key items and tasks that need to be addressed in the future. The facilitator
then presents the scenario to all the participants and then asks the group to address
the first question in the SITMAN, “What will your agency do in this situation?”
Sample Injects
You allow the participants some discussion time and then hand an inject to the
Government and Emergency Management table. The inject is a written note that
you prepared beforehand to provoke particular groups to take specific actions.
The first inject you provide states that local emergency managers and local
cities and counties are overwhelmed with storm response and damages and need
help from the state. There may be several outcomes and activities depending on
how you want this to play out. For example, the inject may state that they need
to establish an EOC at an empty table with representatives from the other tables.
Another option is that the inject may state that notifications must be made to
the other agencies in the room and request their support. The Government and
Emergency Management table may request that they make a general announce-
ment to the entire room or they may choose to write a message on note pads and
hand them out to all the groups.
As the groups work through the issues of the first SITMAN question and inject,
you may present the second question from the SITMAN, allowing the groups time
to address and respond to the question accordingly, including documenting their
response and/or sending out a message to another group.
Hotwash
At the end of the time frame, regardless of whether all the SITMAN questions have
been addressed, stop all exercise activities and introduce the Hotwash activities.
You might ask the group to take 10 minutes to summarize the top 5 (or 10) issues
