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Aflatoxin, Fumes, White Powder—They Just Kept On Coming
by Ron Hall
Office of Communications
A suicide terrorist attack with chemicals is thwarted at a subway station in Washington, DC. Two large water tankers are stolen from a secured parking compound at a water treatment facility, resulting in a police-issued all-points bulletin. The "Star Blast" computer virus is infecting many government computers. A light plane carrying a chemical warfare substance crashes into a popular theme park in Orlando, Fla. And both the secretary of agriculture and the secretary of health and human services, on their way to an emergency meeting at the White House, are killed in a traffic accident when a tour bus runs a red light, hitting their limo.
 Events are literally a hectic blur around Freeman Walker (left, pointing finger), acting chief of the Continuity of Operations Planning Staff in OPPM, as he coordinates an all-hands briefing of a roomful of USDA’s “Crisis Action Team” members. This activity was one of many which constituted USDA’s recent participation in “Exercise Forward Challenge.” --Photo by Ron Hall |
Those were just a few of the "injects," or simulated problems to be dealt with, in the playing field for "Exercise Forward Challenge 2004," a governmentwide emergency operations exercise that took place in May.
According to Freeman Walker, acting chief of the Continuity of Operations Planning Staff in the Office of Procurement and Property Management, over 45 federal departments and agencies were players in Forward Challenge, held on May 12-13. At USDA 118 employees participated in the exercise.
"This was a governmentwide exercise designed to test the Continuity of Operations--or COOP--Plans for those participating federal departments and agencies, including our own COOP Plan here at USDA," he explained. "The idea was for agencies to test how they would carry out their own previously defined 'essential functions'--at an emergency relocation facility."
"That's because some emergency or disaster, either natural or human-caused, would have made the normal work location not available or otherwise uninhabitable."
Len Benning, an emergency management program specialist in the Continuity of Operations Planning Staff, noted that USDA had tested its COOP Plan in the past--most recently during "Exercise Bright Future" held in February.
"But in this most recent operation," he said, "we tested how effectively our USDA employees--who have been designated to deploy when the COOP Plan is activated--were, in fact, able to deploy to USDA's emergency relocation facility in Elkins, West Virginia--and then set up shop there, carry out the essential USDA functions to which they had been tasked, and effectively communicate the status of their efforts."
 It’s all business in the elbow-to-elbow environs of USDA’s “Emergency Operations Center” in Elkins, W.Va., as several members of the Department’s Crisis Action Team (CAT) methodically respond to some of the many ‘injects’ of “Exercise Forward Challenge.” They include (L to R) Office of Procurement and Property Management CAT member David Shea, Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services CAT member Pam Phillips (back to camera), Food Safety CAT member Yvonne Davis, Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services CAT member Lynn Tjeerdsma (on phone), and FFAS CAT member Rob Huttenlocker. --Photo by Ron Hall |
Most of the 118 USDA employees, who were designated to deploy, left Washington, DC and relocated to Elkins, relying on the facility which is normally the Forest Service's headquarters building of the Monongahela National Forest.
Klaus Werner, a COOP consultant to the Continuity of Operations Planning Staff, pointed out that the scenario for Exercise Forward Challenge involved a specific threat to the Washington, DC area and a failed terrorist attack. At the same time, USDA employees involved in the exercise dealt with 'exercise injects' that were specific to USDA's mission.
Such 'USDA-specific exercise injects' included: school children in Mexico City have become ill after eating products made with corn that was grown in the U.S.--and that may have been purposely tainted with aflatoxin; a group calling itself "Government Interference in Free Trade" is sending messages threatening to interfere with food, water, and feed supplies, to include targeting Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service labs and quarantine facilities; an explosion in Chicago is affecting food supplies in that area; three tractor-trailers have crashed--possibly intentionally--in the vicinity of USDA's labs in Ames, Iowa, emitting fumes, contaminating the local water supply, and affecting several acres of crops; white powder has been discovered in the mailroom of the Rural Development facility in St. Louis; and USDA's plan for its 'order of succession' needs to be implemented due to the death of the secretary of agriculture.
Tom Comi, chief COOP consultant to the Continuity of Operations Planning Staff, said USDA employees designated as COOP "Crisis Action Team" (CAT) members immediately deployed to Elkins, following the activation of USDA's COOP Plan, as part of the exercise.
"Their job," he explained, "is to respond to problems and activities occurring within their respective areas of responsibility. They'd coordinate the gathering of information about those events, coordinate the development of responses to resolve those events, and coordinate the communication to USDA senior officials about how the problems are being resolved."
Dave Sloan, the information technology specialist in the Continuity of Operations Planning Staff, recounted that during the exercise the CAT members worked in shifts, normally hunched over their laptops, elbow-to-elbow in a room designated as the COOP Emergency Operations Center, as they grappled with the exercise injects they were provided. "Those injects kept being updated, which required additional strategies for resolving the brushfires that kept cropping up," he recalled.
Emergency management program specialist Cynthia Powell added that CAT members provided periodic updates to a "journal of activities" designed to reflect an up-to-the-minute status of each event being dealt with. "I kept the official journal up-to-date," she explained. "And I also projected a scrolling image of the journal onto a wall in the 'bullpen room,' where most CAT members were working--so that they could keep up with developments from other mission areas, as needed."
Staff secretary Mikaell Carter added that CAT members also conducted daily update briefings by videoconference for USDA subcabinet officials situated at another location.
So, any "lessons learned?" "Yes," Walker replied. "We were able to validate that our current COOP Plan and procedures work. USDA employees are able to deploy to their emergency relocation facilities, continue to perform their essential functions under emergency conditions, and effectively communicate both internally and with other federal departments and agencies."
"Lessons learned from Forward Challenge will help us refine our COOP planning--and be better prepared for future exercises or COOP emergencies." •