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Simulations  Custom Exercises for Public Health Organizations  Texas WMD Incident Program

Exercises

Program Overview

The Terrorism WMD Exercise program of the National Emergency Response and Rescue Training Center (NERRTC) is designed to help prepare jurisdictions (cities, counties, ports and airports, industry) for consequence management functions after a terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction (WMD). An exercise is conducted in the community, based on their own threat and risk assessment and designed to assess their Emergency plan.

Pre-planning
The process begins with the community assisting in the development of the scenario threat, vulnerabilities (to include special events or dates), the type of agents to be used (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or explosive) and the scale of the exercise. NERRTC is prepared to plan and facilitate the full range of exercises. Once a basic design is developed, training is provided at the jurisdiction’s location. NERRTC visits the jurisdiction prior to the scheduled exercise to develop jurisdiction-elected training objectives, discuss possible training scenarios and formulate a mutually agreed upon exercise plan.

The Exercise
The exercise focuses on testing the jurisdiction's Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) from the Incident Command Post through the Emergency Operations Center, interacting with a simulated state EOC or higher level supporting operations center. It is designed to exercise the planning and staff action efforts between the Incident Command Post (ICP), the jurisdiction’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and other organizations and agencies that would normally be involved in the emergency response efforts following a terrorist WMD incident. This allows the individual participants and staffs to work together and improve overall response abilities and staff coordination.

Methodology
The exercise course delivery methodology consists of participants working their actual positions (ICP or EOC) in a simulated terrorist WMD incident, using small group discussions, participant activities and realistic multimedia scenarios. It is facilitated by subject matter experts (SMEs) in an observer-controller role. Activities are concluded by conducting a facilitator-led, after-action review (AAR) using a Socratic learning methodology. The AAR consists of open, self-discovery discussions with participants in order to reinforce the strengths in their plan and to identify weaknesses in need of improvement.

Post-exercise Report
Upon completion of the exercise, NERRTC will complete a post-exercise report that highlights the events of the exercise. It will include the exercise master events list, an exercise summary of events, and training observations made by SMEs (based on discipline experience) addressing the ICP, the EOC and any other responding emergency command or supporting node requested in the exercise drafting process. The post-exercise report will be provided to the jurisdiction leadership about 45 days after the completion of the final after-action review (AAR).

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