RD340 - Virginia Emergency Response Team Exercise (VERTEX) 2007 Functional Exercise


Executive Summary:
This report was replaced in its entirety on February 3, 2010 by Virginia Department of Emergency Management.

The purpose of this report is to analyze exercise results, identify strengths to be maintained and built upon, identify potential areas for further improvement, and support the development of corrective actions. The Commonwealth of Virginia, Virginia’s Emergency Response Team (VERT) hurricane functional exercise (FE) (VERTEX 2007) was developed to test the VERT’s preparations, response, and recovery operations. This exercise was evaluated using the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’s) Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) guidelines, specifically and in alphabetical order by the capabilities of Citizen Evacuation and Shelter-In-Place, Communications, Critical Resource Logistics and Distribution, Economic and Community Recovery, Emergency Operations Center Management, Emergency Public Information and Warning, Fatality Management, Firefighting Operations and Support, Food and Agriculture Safety and Defense, Information Gathering and Recognition of Indicators and Warnings, Mass Care (Sheltering, Feeding, and Related Services), Medical Surge, Structural Damage and Mitigation Assessment, Urban Search and Rescue, and Volunteer and Donations Management. Law Enforcement capabilities are covered under Citizen Evacuation and Shelter-In-Place, Emergency Operations Center Management, and Fatality Management, while Intelligence/Information Sharing and Dissemination is covered under Information Gathering and Recognition of Indicators and Warnings.

Among the capabilities not included in this report are Environmental Health, Onsite Incident Management, and Restoration of Lifelines.

The exercise planning team comprised numerous and diverse agencies, including but not limited to the Virginia Department of Emergency Management (VDEM); Virginia Department of Health (VDH); Virginia State Police; Virginia Department of Military Affairs; Department of Transportation; Department of Social Services; Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services; Virginia Information Technologies Agency; Department of Environmental Quality; jurisdictional representatives from the emergency management regions; DHS, DoD, and other Federal entities; and Old Dominion University’s Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center.

The Virginia Fusion Center’s focus was primarily the Noble Resolve Exercise with NORTHCOM and providing pertinent information to and through the Virginia Emergency Operations Center (VEOC) during VERTEX 2007. The simultaneous National Capital Region exercise, Regional Response ’07, was coordinated to be a stand-alone exercise, held within the framework of VERTEX 2007 using the same scenario. The VDEM Region 3 Tabletop Exercise was also conducted during VERTEX 2007 as a follow-on to that region’s 2006 tabletop exercise concerning inland host sheltering in central Virginia.