Written By: 3/C Seamus Rudolph

Today was another snow day, but with a bit more structure than yesterday. We began the day with some quiche for breakfast made by Mr Smith. We then moved onto our TTX, in which the scenario was a disease outbreak with zombie-like symptoms. My role was Planning Section Chief, the Planning Section is in charge of all situational information, including tracking resources, disseminating information, creating plans and noting documentation. Four other cadets were assigned under me, two Situation Unit Leaders and two Resource Unit Leaders. My first action was creating an Incident Action Plan, which I sent up to the Incident Commanders and the Operations Section Chief. Throughout the TTX I worked closely with the Ops Section Chief as his role was tactical decision making and resource deployment and my role was to track those resources and make future plans. My IAP contained two functional annexes, a containment annex and a vaccine distribution annex. I used my prior knowledge of hazmat situations and planned to establish hot, warm and cold exposure zones if the outbreak spread into our jurisdiction. We strategically located the hot zone away from where the vaccines were to be delivered. Once these plans were approved by the Ops Section Chief and ICs we distributed the plans to the necessary agencies such as Fire Suppression, Law Enforcement, National Guard and Aviation. We were given limited time to conduct this exercise, and with no CEMP in place we had to create plans on the fly. Eventually we were able to contain the outbreak and then moved into an AAR. In the AAR the main improvement I identified for my section was bleed-over into operations. At a certain point in the exercise my section was doing the job of the Operations Section, we had to take a step back and trust our teammates in operations. Another issue was distortion of information and inaccurate reporting. Members of the team would receive information and pass it onto the Incident Command Post, however the information was not always correct and led to a few errors, this likely could’ve been avoided by taking notes while receiving information. I feel as though I was prepared for this exercise by CPT Kitchen’s EM Planning class in which we went in-depth on creating IAPs and different types of plans, as well as planning for resource allocation inside of the core capabilities set by FEMA. After this we set out for dinner in Asheville which was the first time we’ve left the cabin since the snow storm. I observed how 48 hours later, the roads were still in lackluster condition for safe travel. This is due to a different level of preparedness in North Carolina then what we are used to in Massachusetts. They simply don’t have as many plows or as much salt. Especially in the more rural area of Black Mountain where we are staying.