The exercise includes eight states -- Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee – that encompass four FEMA regions. The NLE is the first to test the nation’s response to a natural disaster. Previous NLEs focused on simulated terrorist attacks. The goal is to enable “federal, state and local departments and agencies to align their exercise programs,” according to the federal government.
The threat of a catastrophic earthquake in the United States is very real and awareness has been heightened around the world with devastating quakes striking other countries, Japan being the most recent with the magnitude 9.0 earthquake in March. The NLE follows the bicentennial anniversary of a series of earthquakes striking the New Madrid Seismic Zone that started with a magnitude 7.7 temblor on Dec. 16, 1811.
“The reality is that event caused a number of real-world events to happen that we still observe today,” said Brig. Gen. John Heltzel, director of the Kentucky Division of Emergency Management. “For example, the creation of Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee, the fact that there is a little piece of Kentucky that is dislocated from Kentucky out in the river … and stories are told that the Ohio River actually ran backward when the New Madrid fired off 200 years ago.”
Impacted 24 Counties
The participating states are members of the Central United States Earthquake Consortium and have been working on a catastrophic response plan, which involves local agencies, state governments and the federal partners that would respond to this event in the real world. Heltzel said FEMA asked to use the plan as the basis for the NLE.Following the announcement of the earthquake, posts were manned in emergency operations centers and communications were tested, with state government representatives touching base with their local counterparts and localities verifying that they could contact one another.
At about 1 p.m., Eastern time, representatives in the Kentucky Division of Emergency Management’s Emergency Operations Center were briefed by the Commonwealth Analysis and Assessment Group to gain a better understanding of what was happening in the state. It was revealed that the earthquake was centered along the New Madrid Seismic Zone near Marked Tree, Ark. The representative also said it impacted 24 counties in western Kentucky, left more than 235,000 people without shelter, and the governor had declared a state of emergency.
As the week continues, the exercise will take place through Friday, May 20, with each day having a different focus: Day one included assessing the damaged areas and communications requirements; day two will focus on life saving; day three is for mass evacuations and medical care; the fourth day will cover sustainment, which includes bringing in resources and setting up base camps; and the final day will be for developing after-action reports and assessing how things went.
Heltzel announced that there will be daily after-action reports as well. Each participant will log what he or she learned that day and then each section will complete a facilitated report. He said this was due to lessons learned in previous exercises where participants had the most comments the day the assessments are completed.
Heltzel’s goal is to use the lessons learned and after-action reports to create a new emergency operations plan for the state. “There won’t be a win to this exercise, you won’t win the earthquake, the whole intent is to learn new processes, new procedures and validate our operations plan over the next four days,” he said during a briefing in the EOC.
Recent flooding in the central states has forced state and local governments to scale back their participation in the NLE. Arkansas County Office of Emergency Management Coordinator Shanda Harris told the Stuttgart Daily Leadershe would still participate, but not as extensively as she had planned due to the county being in a state of emergency. Jefferson County, Ill., has tentatively rescheduled its participation in the exercise for October so officials could focus completely on the flooding, the Mt. Vernon Register-News reported.
