Emergency Operations Center, (City of Grand Island, Courtesy)
GRAND ISLAND — For a second-straight year, the City of Grand Island and various Hall County agencies will be using college basketball to simulate a large-scale emergency event.
On Thursday, March 20, the Hall County Emergency Operations Center will be filled with representatives from 20 different departments and agencies that would be enacted in the event of a community-wide emergency.
The functional exercise is designed to evaluate emergency coordination capabilities and functions, and will focus on exercising plans, policies, procedures and personnel involved in incident command and EOC management during an incident.
Government officials and partner agencies will practice their specific roles or functions in a simulated emergency situation. This type of exercise is conducted in a realistic, time-sensitive environment and often utilizes simulated “injects” of information that dictate additional information, occurrences or activities that affect the exercise scenario. Injects are typically provided by a group of individuals in a separate “simulation cell” and provide these injects by a scheduled timeline.
That’s where the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament comes in. Certain events in the basketball game such as points scored, fouls or free throws will correspond to specific disaster events such as patients, missing persons, fires and more. Thus, the events of the unpredictable basketball game, happening in real-time, will dictate the aspects that determine the scope and severity of the disaster.
The exercise will begin approximately at 11 a.m. and will last the duration of the first NCAA Men’s basketball game between #9-Creighton and #8-seed Louisville. For more information or to submit a request to cover Thursday’s exercise, please contact Communications Manager Spencer Schubert at spencers@grand-island.com<mailto:spencers@grand-island.com>.
