Emergency Preparedness Exercise—Driving Resiliency And Readiness

To quote Periander, “Practice is everything.”To fulfill the mission of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD) it is crucial that the MWRD be prepared to quickly respond to various natural and man-made disasters including floods, tornados, earthquakes, materials incidents, resource shortages, cyber events, terrorism, and other catastrophic types of emergencies. Core to that preparedness is the writing of an Emergency Operations Plan. Integral to the process, and maybe even more important, is the practicing and testing of the plan to discover gaps in the plan, clarify rolls, and strengthen individual performance. Our recent participation in Operation Power Play 2017 provided an excellent opportunity to do just that.