Conducting a full-scale emergency management exercise during COVID-19: A case study of Puyallup Chill Out 2021

Kirstin Hofmann and Greg Massey
Additional contact information
Kirstin Hofmann: City of Puyallup, Puyallup City Hall, USA
Greg Massey: Puyallup Police Department, USA

Journal of Business Continuity & Emergency Planning, 2023, vol. 16, issue 4, 335-345

Abstract: The COVID-19 public health emergency severely limited the ability of emergency managers to conduct emergency exercises, particularly at the functional or full-scale level. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic response, other emergencies continued, and local emergency management was called to respond, ensuring that local guidelines and COVID-19 restrictions were observed. This paper describes how the pandemic impacted on the City of Puyallup’s emergency management training and exercise programme and how the City adapted to conduct a full-scale exercise in the autumn of 2021. Multiple delays, planning partners overwhelmed by COVID-19, and emergencies that occurred prior to the exercise were all addressed and included in the exercise scenario. The City of Puyallup and its planning partners built in contingencies in the run-up to the exercise, all the way through to the day of exercise play. Providing a safe, realistic and timely opportunity for the City of Puyallup and partners to conduct the exercise has resulted in a far-reaching after-action report and improvement plan to guide the preparedness and planning efforts of the City and its partners.

Keywords: COVID-19; full-scale exercise; emergency management; planning; shelter; extreme weather (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M1 M10 M12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hstalks.com/article/7736/download/ (application/pdf)
https://hstalks.com/article/7736/ (text/html)
Requires a paid subscription for full access.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aza:jbcep0:y:2023:v:16:i:4:p:335-345

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Business Continuity & Emergency Planning from Henry Stewart Publications
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Henry Stewart Talks ().