Statewide Terrorism / Bioterrorism Exercise -- Reducing the Fee
Mar 05, 2010By: John Wilgis
The Florida Department of Health in coordination with Florida's Department of Law Enforcement, Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Division of Emergency Management, Department of Environmental Protection and the Florida Hospital Association, request your participation in an unconventional and exciting exercise to be delivered online from April 1 - 15 and May 1- May 15, 2010. On-line exercise participation will be available 24/7.
Online exercise registration on a secure web site will begin on March 15, 2010. Please email your name, agency, and position title to the Exercise Registrar: reid_jaffe@doh.state.fl.us. You will then be given the web site address and a password for online registration. Participation in this exercise is limited to response agencies and hospital staff.
A webinar will be held on March 31 from 10-11 a.m. EDT, to introduce the exercise rules and objectives and answer any questions. Participation in the webinar is not required for participation in the exercise.
The purpose of this exercise is to detect, prevent, and reduce the capability of a terrorist organization conducting conventional and biological agent attacks within the state of Florida. The fictional terrorist organization in this exercise is the Florida Environmental Existentialists (FEE).
Each day, from April 1 - 15 and again from May 1 -15, you will receive online information on the FEE activities. The storyline for the exercise will evolve over the first two weeks in April and the first two weeks in May, with injects providing intelligence and information about FEE activities. It will begin with a series of seemingly unrelated events. Unraveling event relationships will lead to an emerging picture of the terrorist organization, their capabilities and goals, and provide you with opportunities to obstruct their plans for murder and mayhem. Exercise injects will place you in a variety of roles across local and state agencies. It is an opportunity to view the world through the eyes of other responders.
Information sharing among response agencies and hospitals from the local level through state and federal levels is a key target capability that we want to assess as an exercise objective. You may respond as an individual, but preferably you will respond as a member of an interagency team. You can respond with an action that you or your team think would be appropriate, decide that no action is needed, provide a comment, ask a question about the inject, or all three.
Exercise controllers will evaluate participant comments and actions on a daily basis. As a consensus develops on recommended courses of action, they will decide the degree to which the terrorist plans are prevented, thwarted, or redirected. Terrorist plans that are not acted on sufficiently or quickly enough will produce casualties or destruction of property.
Guidance for response is provided in the Florida Comprehensive Emergency Terrorism Incident Response Annex and the Working Draft Human Disease Biological Incident Annex that can be downloaded as exercise references.
New Information about FEE activity will be posted to the exercise web site on a daily basis. Exercise alerts will also be provided through the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) and the Florida Department of Health Emergency Notification System (FDENS).
For more information about the Reducing the FEE exercise contact Jack Pittman with the Florida Department of Health, jack_pittman@doh.state.fl.us. Thank you.
