13th September, 2018 A one-day tabletop exercise on Incident Command System (ICS) is currently underway at NEMO’s conference room aims to train Tonga’s National Emergency Management Office (NEMO) and key emergency responders to better respond to any incident.
Led by the Nevada National Guard the exercise focuses on how participants can utilize the Incident Command System when an incident occurs. It will also assist Incident Commanders when they deal with events and requesting resources available at NEMO to respond to the incident accordingly.
Major Geir J. Gabrielson from Nevada’s National Guard said once an incident occurs decision making is needed to be pushed down to a lower level so NEMO can focus on providing and directing resources to Incident Commanders and stakeholders to avoid delays in disaster response.
“This is the second time we’ve been out here. We came out here last September and we worked on modifying the National Emergency Coordination Centre and this is building up of that and a couple of different things,” he said.
Major Gabrielson said that last year’s exercise was only with NEMO, His Majesty’s Armed Forces and Tonga Police but they expanded the participants this year to include line ministries and all groups that are involved in emergency response.
“We will have more exercise next year building upon this year’s exercise. Our ultimate goal is to train NEMO so they can better handle things on their own and better handle the incidents in the country more independently.”
He said that participants are expected at the end of today’s exercise to know how to use the ICS, how to make a decision at a lower level and at the same time provide critical information to NEMO at time of emergency response.
The exercise includes scenarios of fire, flooding, tsunami and cyclone and participants get to decide who will be the Incident Commander and how to coordinate with NEMO to use its resources during the response.
ENDS
Issued by the: Ministry of Meteorology, Energy, Information, Disaster Management, Environment, Climate Change and Communications.