The Ultimate ‘Bad Day’ Practice Session Unfolds at NLE18

No matter how good the individual members of a team might be, if they don’t learn to work together, they have little to no chance of succeeding when they called upon to perform. That’s as true for the workplace as it is for any band, orchestra, sports team or assembly of superheroes. Practice is called for and no matter how mundane or monotonous rehearsals, drills and game-plan workouts might be, being familiar with how you play with others can make all the difference in the world.

Such is the vision for one of the most ambitious of “practice sessions” for the homeland security community: the National Level Exercise (NLE). Organized by FEMA and held every two years, the NLE examines “the ability of all levels of government, private industry, and nongovernmental organizations to protect against, respond to, and recover” from a major catastrophic event.

That type of catastrophic event can take any number of shapes and forms. It could be a natural disaster such as a hurricane, an earthquake or wide-scale flood or fire. It could be a series of terrorist attacks occurring in one location or a series of places. It could be a public health emergency such as a flu outbreak or even a cyber event that compromises critical infrastructure that cripples populations from going about their lives. Regardless of what form they take, “catastrophic events” do not discriminate in who they strike as no bit of geography or demography is immune from assault. Sometimes those assaults can be seen coming (e.g. approaching hurricanes, weather systems, etc.), while others can occur out of the blue and be unforeseen (e.g. terrorist attack, earthquake, etc.).

See more of this post at HS Today at: https://www.hstoday.us/federal-pages/dhs/fema-dhs-federal-pages/insidehs-ultimate-bad-day-practice-session-unfolds-nle18/