FEMA Invites Whole Community to Participate in National Level Exercise
On April 3, FEMA announced that the agency is conducting its 2018 National Level Exercise for the whole community and would like to invite other government agencies, representatives and organizations in the private sector, communities, and individuals to participate in this historic exercise. The 2018 National Level Exercise (NLE), based on a mid-Atlantic hurricane scenario, represents one key step towards implementing FEMA’s recently released 2018-2022 Strategic Plan.
The 2018 National Level Exercise, which takes place April 30-May 11, is the first major exercise following the release of the 2018-2022 FEMA Strategic Plan. The exercise supports the three goals of the Strategic Plan: Build a Culture of Preparedness by empowering the country to participate and enhance their own preparedness for future disasters; to build FEMA, our state and local partners, and all participants’ readiness for potential catastrophic events; and to reduce the complexity of FEMA by closely incorporating our partners into the exercise side-by-side with FEMA as we execute our mission in an exercise.
The 2018 exercise will also employ and test lessons learned from the 2017 hurricane season. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria, and Nate tested FEMA’s readiness, and incorporating those lessons into this exercise, and testing our response, will help build our readiness as an agency and as a nation for the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season and future disasters across the country.
FEMA will also use the NLE to engage individuals, businesses, and community organizations on topics such as alerts and warnings, family communications planning, mitigation through insurance, business resilience, and mobilization of the private sector during disasters to help build a culture of preparedness.
This exercise also represents ongoing engagement with the private sector and infrastructure to test our coordination through all levels of government in exercise play, from engagement with the National Business Emergency Operations Center (NBEOC), to the regional level with FEMA Region III’s Regional Business Emergency Operations Center (RBEOC), and the state level with our state partners’ State Business Emergency Operations Centers. The private sector plays an invaluable role in helping communities respond to and recover from disasters, and this exercise empowers FEMA to work closely with those organizations and strengthen our partnerships for future events.
As part of FEMA’s goal of encouraging and building participation in the exercise across the nation, we developed fact sheets on how individuals, communities, and the private sector and infrastructure can respectively engage with us on this exercise. The 2018 National Level Exercise presents an opportunity to prepare for a potential hurricane using a scenario and lessons learned from the 2017 Hurricane Season as we look ahead to the 2018 Atlantic Hurricane Season starting June 1.
The 2018 National Level Exercise provides an opportunity for FEMA to put the 2018-2022 Strategic Plan into action, and FEMA is inviting you, our partners, to participate. We encourage you to open and share the fact sheets, and to take action to prepare for future hurricanes. The 2017 Hurricane Season has taught us many lessons, including the value of being prepared for the unexpected. Take action today to prepare for tomorrow.
To learn more, please visit: http://www.fema.gov/nle. Additionally, if you have any questions, please contact nle@fema.dhs.gov about participating in the 2018 National Level Exercise.
