Hurricane drills catch local officials by surprise

The Homeland Security Department last week kicked off a series of regional hurricane preparedness exercises, but some local officials have yet to be notified about the drills.

"I haven't heard anything," said William Smith, emergency planner at the Atlanta-Fulton County Emergency Management Agency, on Friday. "I'm getting questions from a number of people. I don't really have all the information."

The Atlanta-Fulton County emergency management office has about 10 employees, Smith said, and two officials who spoke with Government Executive said they have not received notice of the drill, which begins May 31. Atlanta will be at the center of an emergency preparedness exercise that will involve participation from eight states, including Georgia, DHS said in its May 4 announcement, making the city's drill the biggest of five exercises.

DHS spokesman Russ Knocke said emergency management officials should be aware of the practice exercises, and that the pre-hurricane season drills were designed to find gaps in the chain of command and fix them.

After contacting officials in the Georgia Emergency Management Agency, Smith said, "They don't have anything on their calendar." The state and local emergency management agencies are located in the same area code, about three-and-a-half miles apart. A spokesman for the state agency verified his claim.

"I haven't gotten any information on that drill," said Ken Davis, a public affairs officer for GEMA.

The Hurricane Preparedness Exercise series involves drills in San Juan, Puerto Rico; New Orleans; Atlanta and a still-to-be-disclosed location that would involve New York, New Jersey and much of New England. A disaster preparedness exercise already has been conducted in Philadelphia, DHS said. The "tabletop" exercise, as officials have called it, is supposed to bring emergency responders together for a strategy session.

The series was designed to be a test of the "shared responsibility among local, state and federal agencies and our nongovernmental partners," said George Foresman, DHS' undersecretary for preparedness. Exercises in evacuation, sheltering and national response and management planning will be performed.

"By training together now, we better integrate planning and response capabilities and make certain that roles and responsibilities are understood at all levels of government," he said last week.

Atlanta emergency officials who said they were not kept in the loop regarding the federal exercise at the end of this month said an evacuation drill will be taking place there two weeks before the DHS and FEMA event is scheduled. Smith said a contra-flow traffic plan -- in which both sides of a two-way highway are turned into an exodus route, allowing residents to quickly escape disasters -- will be practiced May 17 and 18. That drill, he added, is "not at all in conjunction" with any federal emergency exercise plans.

One emergency management official in South Carolina, who asked to remain anonymous, said state officials were told to be ready for a strategy session between state and federal entities, but said he was not aware of any jurisdictional teams participating in the drills. The official said the state office received "fairly short notice" that it would be joining in a drill later this month. About 35 of South Carolina's Emergency Management Division personnel are expected to participate.

Officials in Florida, Louisiana and New Orleans also were contacted for this story, but did not respond to messages.

Knocke said residents of areas where drills are being performed won't notice much disruption, as federal officials will coordinate with state and local teams behind closed doors to identify and fix gaps in the chain of command between federal, state and jurisdiction agencies.