Congratulations Parkersburg Iowa, Fire Department!
Congratulations to the Parkersburg Iowa Fire Department. They were the lucky winners of the free 12 month site license of our VTT™ – Virtual Table Top raffled off by the Fire Service Training Bureau at the 89th annual State Fire School. We hope that our platform will provide another tool to help them plan, prepare and protect their people.
MediaTech’s VTT™ Helps Power Response to Local Emergency
Photo by Kyle Ocker, Courtesy Daily Iowegian
Daily Iowegian, Centerville Fire Department use VTT™ for social media alerts, after action reviews.
MediaTech was proud to provide its homegrown tools to emergency responders and the local newspaper when the second major fire in two days threatened our community.
It all began at approximately 1:06 p.m. on Sept. 25 as the Centerville Police Department received a 911 call of a fire on the roof of The Gypsy Quarter at 218 E. State St. in Centerville. The Centerville Fire Department and Mercy Ambulance were immediately dispatched and arrived on scene within three minutes of receiving the call. The fire soon moved from the building housing Gypsy Quarter and into the building next door housing Clickhappy Photography and Ted Clark’s plumbing. Emergency personnel shut down power to part of Haynes Avenue and also evacuated surrounding offices, businesses and buildings.
Firefighters were still battling the blaze at 3:00 pm, when the Daily Iowegian went to press. The newspaper used social media to keep the community updated on the situation, posting the VTT depiction of the response shown above to their Facebook page and to the DailyIowegian.com website.
The Centerville Fire Department was assisted at the scene by the Mystic, Moravia, Moulton, Cincinnati, Albia, Corydon, Seymour, Allerton Fire Departments from Iowa and the Liberty Township Missouri Fire Department along with the Centerville Police Department and Police Reserves, Appanoose County Sheriff’s Department, Iowa State Patrol, Mercy Ambulance Service, Mystic First Responders, Alliant Energy, ADLM Emergency Management and the American Red Cross. It took responders a little over 3 hours to bring the fire under control.
Photo by Krystal Fowler, Courtesy Daily Iowegian
An investigation into the cause of the fire revealed that the fire was accidently ignited by a contractor working on the roof of the building. The Gypsy Quarter was totally destroyed and several adjoining businesses suffered smoke and water damage.
After the incident, the Centerville Fire Department asked MediaTech to host a VTT-enhanced after action review for the responders. Developed by the US Army, an after action review is a structured review or de-brief process for analyzing what happened during an emergency operation, determining why it happened, and discovering how it can be done better. The AAR for the Gypsy Quarter fire was held on Oct 10 at MediaTech Headquarters.
Thank you for joining us at the 2013 KEMA Conference
We would like to thank all of the people that stopped by our vendor bototh, September 11-13, at the annual Kansas Emergency Management Association (KEMA) Conference in Topeka, Kansas.
Tabletop Exercise Design – Determine Objectives
An objective is a description of the performance you expect from participants to demonstrate competence. Objectives go hand in hand with the purpose statement but are more specific and performance based.
Objectives drive every phase of the exercise process from design to followup.
How Are Objectives Determined?
Many objectives become evident at the time of the needs assessment, when designers identify problem areas. These needs can usually be translated into a statement of objectives.
Suppose your last exercise showed weaknesses in alert and notification, specifically a failure on the part of the EOC to analyze and implement call-down procedures. One of the resulting objectives would be to verify that the EOC is now able to notify the proper agencies according to the plan.
Objectives are also arrived at by breaking down a purpose statement into its logical components.
How Many Objectives?
There can be as few as two or three objectives in a small exercise, or as many as 100 in a large national exercise including many Federal, State, and local jurisdictions. For an average exercise, 10 or fewer objectives are recommended.
What Makes a “Good” Objective?
The main thing to remember about objectives is that they must be clear, concise, and focused on participant performance. They should contain:
- An action, stated in observable terms.
- The conditions under which the action will be performed.
- Standards (or level) of performance.
In other words, an objective should state who should do what under what conditions according to what standards.