August 4, 2005
Staff train in emergency management
Next week, about 70 UW employees, along with several of their counterparts with the city, county and state, will travel to Emmitsburg, Md., for a week of advanced training in emergency management.
The UW is the first university in the country to participate in this national training opportunity, which heretofore has been reserved for cities or counties. The Federal Emergency Management Agency provides the training at its National Emergency Training Center. The UW’s Office of Emergency Management submitted the successful proposal.
“We argued that the UW is really a city within a city,” says Steve Charvat, director of emergency management at the UW. “We face many of the same issues that are faced by a small city. In the case of a city-wide or regionwide emergency, we know that the UW will be expected to act autonomously in its emergency response and recovery efforts for 72 hours, perhaps longer.”
The National Emergency Training Center exercise will involve a detailed simulation of a major emergency on the campus. While previous on-campus exercises have stressed the institution’s immediate response to an emergency, this exercise will concentrate on recovery efforts — how to restore the University’s essential functions in the shortest period of time.
“This exercise will give us an opportunity to test the University’s capabilities in ways that would be very difficult for us to do on our own,” Charvat says. “The Emmitsburg facility and staff has a national reputation for providing the best emergency management training in the country. We are delighted to be able to take advantage of this opportunity.”
In addition to a variety of UW personnel, the training exercise includes representatives of the city of Seattle’s office of emergency management, the Seattle Police Department, the Seattle Fire Department, Red Cross, King County’s office of emergency management, and the state office of emergency management.
