by Ronna Sweeney, KUAM NewsSunday, May 11, 2008 Subscribe to Ronna's newsfeed
It's likely you remember when TOPOFF-4, the nation's premier exercise of terrorism preparedness, happened on Guam last October, with top officials at every level of government, as well as international community and private sector representatives participating in thre locations: Arizona, Oregon and Guam. Recently, preliminary results of the T4 exercises were released. Recently U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials along with Guam Department of homeland security advisor Colonel Dennis Santo Tomas met in Oklahoma City to discuss preliminary results of TOPFOFF-4. "In my humble opinion, Guam played the scenario through from start to finish," said Santo Tomas. "From what we were told by the National Homeland Security Office and FEMA Region 9 out of Oakland, they were very much pleased with Guam's participation."An after-action quick look report issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency highlights several problems experienced by T4 participants in all three locations. Notable are that in intelligence, information sharing and dissemination participants reported delays in receiving responses to classified requests for information. For on-site incident management there was difficulty conducting and coordinating multiple missions at the incident sites. And for emergency operations center management the report states that departments and agencies at all levels of government lacked critical information at times.Continued Santo Tomas, "Certainly it wasn't perfect. In future exercises we want to make sure we include more of the community and address all the special needs. Even pet evacuation is a new area. We want to continue to build on what we learned from TOPOFF-4 for future exercises to come." Santo Tomas adds that while the TOPOFF training series has concluded other educational exercises are planned so that the public and private sectors can continue improving emergency response systems.He said, "We are already engaging ourselves for a June typhoon tabletop exercise, which we have invited our regional neighbors from the CNMI to participate, but again it's going to involve all the community partners on island and we're pretty excited about that."