Emergency Management Training Support Activity

[avguy]

Our Wing is in the process of starting up a new ES activity/program, and am wondering whether any other CAP groups have been involved in anything similar.  Our state recently constructed a "Contemporary Operating Environment", which is a training facility for teaching emergency management personnel how to work in an Emergency Operations Center environment.  In addition to a state-of-the-art EOC (main room seats 120 with raised floor, 4 projection screens and many flat-screen monitors and is dividable; breakout rooms for logistics, planning, operations, and PIO, along with a videoconferencing suite and other support spaces), the facility also has video cameras and microphones throughout for the recording of exercises to support debriefing and post-exercise takeaways.  A central control room allows exercise facilitators to control all displayed content on all the projectors and monitors in the facility, including the ability to add fake news stories into the regular satellite/cable news channels.

CAP is working with the state's emergency management training group to develop a program whereby CAP will assist with staffing the 1-2 major statewide exercises per year by helping with the following:

  - Operating the PTZ camera controls, microphone mixing, and video recording during exercises.
  - Video editing recorded content for the purposes of debriefing and the take-away DVD for participants (facility has high-end Final Cut Pro workstation)
  - Creating "fake news" (using facility's broadcast-quality ENG equipment and green-screen capabilities) to support the exercise scenarios.
  - Provide real-time AV support for the many types of systems (presentation, video signage, video conferencing, recording, etc.) that are all being used simultaneously and whose primary users (exercise participants) are not necessarily familiar or trained in their operation.
  - Broaden exposure for CAP and develop relationships with emergency management professionals around the state and region who attend the exercises.
  - Participate as needed in the exercises, both to represent CAP as well as potentially other simulated roles to support the scenarios.

Our first major exercise will be in the fall; we are just getting started in the planning, so I'm curious whether other Wings have done anything similar and if there are any lessons we can learn the easy way through your experiences.  We hope that this will be an exciting opportunity for both cadets and seniors to get involved with state-wide emergency management training activities.

[LTC Don]

 :clap: Bravo!

Good luck with this.  Anything that can be done to get significant facetime with state government agencies is a very good thing.

North Carolina isn't doing anything specifically with what you described, but we have made significant progress with our standing with Emergency Management.  We now have personnel actively working in the Air Ops breakout room to help market and coordinate CAP aviation tasks with other agencies (USCG, ARNG, FAA, FEMA, etc.).  We have personnel managing the sign-in area, and assisting with food ops to feed the EOC staff.  And, we have personnel staffing the Logistics breakout room(s), who have had formal specialized training in assisting the EM Logistics staff with fulfilling and routing logistics taskings.

North Carolina has just gone through a significant restructuring, and CAP has been re-designated a 'section', integrated into NC Emergency Management while before, it was an actual Division under the old Dept of Crime Control and Public Safety.  Effective 01JAN12, CCPS was re-named the new North Carolina Department of Public Safety and a number of other agencies were consolidated.  This is a huge move for us and is already showing great promise in our DR mission being expanded.

Additionally, the ARNG, EM, and some other agencies just moved into a new facility which includes a new, state of the art EOC facility and CAP has been invited to participate in an inaugural test exercise later this month.  Our state EM folks have been quite excited to offer training for us since we provide a static, in-residence labor pool far more stable than always relying on ARNG which often have to have Just-In-Time (JIT) training, and can't always be depended upon to be available because of deployments.  CAP on the other hand, doesn't deploy so they can train us up and update us as necessary so the stress of JIT is removed.

So, keep up the good work, and press forward.  CAP brings a lot to the table with DR in terms of manpower, transportation, communications, and aviation - it just has to be marketed.  You might find receptive ears if you start exploring ways you can assist your state EM logistics folks with programs such as FEMA Points of Distribution and logistics staff liaision with the counties.

[avguy]

Thank you for the input.  I'm relatively new to CAP and currently involved primarily at the squadron level where my older son is a cadet (and younger son planning to join this coming fall), so I plan to leave it to the Wing ES folks to "market" CAP into the other statewide EM assistance opportunities and be personally focused on getting this specific training support program off the ground and running successfully.