New Madrid Regional Exercises

New Madrid Regional Exercises (NMREX) Overview

A number of the CUSEC member states will be participating in a regional earthquake exercise June 19-21, 2007.  The states exercising are Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee, as will the communities of DeSoto County, Mississippi, and Evansville, Indiana.  Their exercises will coincide with the full-scale portion of the SONS07 exercise happening.  SONS, short for Spills of National Significance, is a test of response activities dealing with large-scale oil and hazardous materials incidents resulting from unintentional causes.  For this exercise, the precipitating cause will be a devastating earthquake in the New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ).  The main federal players in the spill portion will be the US Coast Guard and the Environmental Protection Agency.

In the early planning for the exercise, FEMA was a major player, especially on the earthquake piece.  Due to national exercise calendar restraints, FEMA is no longer supporting the earthquake portion on the national level, though all four FEMA regional offices within the CUSEC region will support their state's exercise play as needed.  As a result, the states are developing their earthquake portions of the exercise as they see it befitting their needs, though still aligning their exercises with the region as far as the basic scenario and expected damage.

In addition, CUSEC, in cooperation with the Center for Earthquake Research and Information (CERI) at the University of Memphis, the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), and FEMA Mitigation/National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP), will be conducting a parallel exercise with Arkansas, Missouri, and Tennessee.  The purpose is to test communication and processes needed to initiate and better manage post-earthquake investigations in those states.  Representatives of all three state geological surveys will be present in the their respective state Emergency Operations Centers (EOC’s) to receive requests and information pertaining to post-earthquake investigation efforts.  Much of the information will be sent from CUSEC offices using amateur radio volunteers on June 19.  Amateur radio volunteers, commonly known as “hams,” are expected to be a primary source of emergency communication following a catastrophic earthquake in this area, which will heavily damage many traditional land-based forms of communication.

EXERCISE RELATED LINKS
HAZUS Scenarios - Follow this link to view the latest baseline HAZUS scenarios.  Recommended for State Planning purposes only
Exercise Schedule - View the latest versions of CUSEC Member State exercise plans
SONS07 Website - Official Spills of National Significance Website (external site)
Environmental Protection Agency (external site)
United States Coast Guard (external site)
Federal Emergency Management Agency (external site)

Updated 1/24/2007