When a Plan Comes Together- #1

When it comes to emergency services to old adage of “practice makes perfect” could not be any more appropriate!  We train, drill and exercise on all different types of levels all year preparing for the next bad day.  This training we plan and/or participate in involves an insane amount of planning and work from the very beginning.  We’ve deciding to bring you a long for the trip of planning an exercise from start to finish for an exercise we will be coordinating with Cumberland Goodwill EMS!  We will be blogging about each planning meeting, the organizations involved, the actual exercise and the after action review process! 

Last Friday Michele Parsons (our stupendous Training Coordinator) and I met with Cumberland Goodwill EMS to kick off the planning of an exercise.  First meetings in the exercise planning process always revolve around one topic, what are you trying to test?  The “what” typically involves an emergency plan or protocol/procedure.  For Cumberland Goodwill the “what” is their response plan to a large emergency incident during a car show event hosted by Carlisle Events. 

Because it is nearly impossible to test an entire plan in one exercise, Michele worked with the folks from Cumberland Goodwill to narrow down a more specific part of the plan that they wish to test.  With several specific objectives set, a few more items needed settled to really get the planning ball rolling! 

The next important step in the initial planning meeting is the “who” of the exercise.  It is important to create a list of relevant groups or agencies that would realistically respond to such an event to participate in the exercise.  Again, practice makes perfect, and the more we practice together the better off we are.  So a list of several emergency services agencies in the Carlisle area was created, along with DPS staff and a few of our special teams!  During this part of the planning phase a “planning team” was also created.  It is important to get input on exercise planning from other agencies to make sure you are planning a realistic exercise.  It is also important though to limit the number of folks on the planning team, so that there is an element of surprise when the exercise occurs, that will allow us to truly assess responders. 

This initial meeting is also the best opportunity to discuss a lot of exercise logistics, such as budget, possible dates and the desired length of the exercise.  The next step in the process will be to contact the potential participants, start designing a scenario and a schedule set up for the monthly meetings that will be involved in this planning process. 

So that in a nutshell was our first meeting.  Stay tuned and we’ll take you through this whole process with us!