SONS Exercise Preparation to Test National
Response Plans Underway
JEFFERSON CITY, June 8, 2006-An initial planning meeting
recently was held in Chicago to discuss exercise objectives for the
two-week Spills of National Significance (SONS 07) national exercise
slated for June 2007.
“Missouri State Emergency Management Agency plans
to use the SONS exercise to test portions of our catastrophic earthquake
plan. We will activate our Emergency Operations Center and support
local responder exercises in St. Louis, Cape Girardeau, and other
Missouri communities on the Mississippi River at the confluences of
the Missouri and the Ohio Rivers,” said Missouri State Emergency
Management Director Ronald M. Reynolds.
The SONS federal planners envision the first week of
exercise to focus on response. Tentatively the exercise will start
with oil spills on the Great Lakes, which will activate the National
Response Plan. A catastrophic earthquake along the New Madrid Seismic
Zone on the Mississippi River will complicate response on the Great
Lakes and try to trigger the Incident of National Significance criteria.
Policy makers in Washington D.C. will have to decide how to allocate
scare resources among 13 states responding to a disaster larger than
“Katrina.”
The second week of the SONS exercise will focus on recovery.
Fifteen tabletop exercises are planned for each of the 15 Emergency
Support Functions (ESFs) listed in the National Response Plan.
Federal planners attending the meeting represented the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the U.S. Department
of Homeland Security’s Coast Guard (USCG), and Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA). The Central United States Earthquake Consortium
(CUESC) represented the 13 states contacted about participating in
the National Exercise.
“The SONS 07 exercise planners are working with
states to design a series of state, local and federal exercises to
test the National Response Plan and trigger the criteria for the Incident
of National Significance,” said Bob Stevens with FEMA.
The states will be busy designing their response and
recovery exercises between now and mid-October 2006. The states will
brief the Coast Guard, FEMA, and the EPA on their exercise scenarios
at the mid-planning SONS conference October 17-20 in St. Louis. Likewise
the federal agencies will be writing scenarios to test the 17 objectives
Congress would like addressed from the Katrina report.
States contacted about participating in the SONS 07
exercise include: Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky,
Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, and Wisconsin.
Many local jurisdictions may also exercise their local response plans
to either a hazardous materials incident, or an earthquake event.