During the week of June 29th CSOT members will participate in “Shaky Ground”, table-top exercise. This type of exercise is used to test an organization’s emergency response to a simulated disaster in which participants review and discuss the actions they would take per their plans, but do not perform any of these actions.
This exercise is intended to stimulate thinking and discussion on the appropriate actions to be taken both within our individual departments and the campus as a whole as we respond and recover from a significant earthquake.
Shaky Ground has been designed as a two-phase table-top exercise: Phase One is a virtual table top—participants will receive emails during normal working hours over two days that describe the campus situation and significant events as they occur throughout the day. All messages will have "This is a Shaky Ground Exercise Message" in the subject line.
Team members are asked to contemplate and discuss what actions their department would take, if any, to address the message situation. We hope that you will choose to involve other people in your department in the exercise, as an actual event would likely require everyone’s participation. Each department is expected to respond via email to questions posed within each message (3 messages per day). Your emailed responses should be addressed to Janet Ward and Cheryl Michaels. All correspondence will be posted to the exercise web site as soon as possible. The exercise web site can be found at http://www.spu.edu/depts/security/CSOTShakyGround.htm. Check back periodically for updates.
Phase Two is a traditional table top. CSOT members will meet in the Emergency Operation Center in the afternoon on Wednesday July 1st for three hours – an SPU Alert message be sent out to participants telling you when to meet. Please treat this message as if you received it in an actual emergency. We will discuss some of the situations that have developed over the preceding days and work through the various issues presented. New developments may occur which will need to be resolved. At the end of the exercise, each department should be able to document their status in a CSOT Departmental Status Report.
The goal of this exercise is to review the Core Support Operations Team response, organization and administrative processes. Exercise objectives inlcude:
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Serve as a training tool for CSOT
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Require participants to communicate with each other and work together in a time-crunch/stress-filled situation
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Understand each person’s role and responsibilities
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Test the SPU-Alert system to reach CSOT members and/or backups. And establish a secondary contact method if SPU-Alert or cell phones are not available
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Test the CSOT Departmental Plans to reveal areas that need to be included or improved
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Identify issues that have not been included in the planning done to date
There are a few things you can do to prepare for the exercise:
The CSOT leadership team appreciates your willingness to participate in this 3-day exercise and once completed you’ll have an opportunity to evaluate this exercise. The first Shaky Ground email message will come to you Monday morning… if questions arise during the exercise, please contact Cheryl Michaels or me.
Sincerely,
Janet
Janet Ward
ECMT-Core Support and Operations Team, Chair
Associate Vice President, Information and Data Management
Seattle Pacific University
Third Avenue West, Suite 120
Seattle, WA. 98119-1922
Phone: 206-281-2701
Fax: 206-378-5095
Web: www.spu.edu/depts/idm/
