FIU Students, Agencies Respond to Fictional Hurricane

First responders learn through active disasters as well as simulations. It’s well known that if you’re meeting a fellow first responder for the first time in the field, it’s probably too late. That makes the simulations all the more important.

In Florida, first responders and NGOs gather for an annual simulation that brings together all the various participants who would wind up on an active disaster scene and allows the handshaking to be done then. Last week was Florida International University’s (FIU) 8th Annual Disaster Field Course Simulation where 120 participants, including FIU students and individuals from participating agencies, went through the simulation of responding to a category 5 hurricane in the Caribbean.

The usual three-day event was stretched to four this year as the participants, including the U.S. Marines, went through the process from the paperwork prior to arriving on scene to setting up camp and then collaborating with multiple agencies and organizations to provide aid on the ground.

The focus for the last several years has been on earthquakes, so this year’s fictional hurricane was a change.

“We try to emulate that every disaster is different, and each of our field courses is also different,” said Dulce Suarez, assistant director for the Academy for International Disaster Preparedness at FIU. “We add new elements, new partners, sometimes we change partnerships; we changed the scenario completely this year.”

That was partly because of the increasing threat of hurricanes to Latin America and also because of the Marines’ activity and presence when these hurricanes happen.

Day one was a prep day for deploying to a disaster, a day to get the mindset right and get the proper materials ready. Day two was a team-building day since many of the students are enrolled online and hadn’t met in person yet. The students go through an obstacle course.

Then it’s time for the orders and customs check and the transition to the scene of the hurricane, where they set up camp, do an inventory of resources, and set up cots and the rest of the base. There’s a safety briefing tour of the affected region and then the helicopters fly in, four of them this year, including Miami-Dade Fire and Rescue and the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Border Patrol, and Broward County EMS. It’s a chance for those agencies to collaborate and for the students to fly in a chopper.

There’s a debriefing every evening as well as a simulated press event, where the students have to respond as they would during a real disaster.

One of the participating NGOs was Global Empowerment Mission (GEM), which was founded to “get the most amount of aid to the most people in the least amount of time for the least amount of money.”

GEM has physical locations around the world but is headquartered in Miami. During the last 12 years, GEM has responded to disasters in 50 states and 53 countries.

The organization wanted to test out its systems and procedures during the simulation. Mainly, would it be efficient to deliver the donated goods and “family necessities kits” at the location of the disaster or continue the practice of having volunteers take the kits and other resources from warehouses and then to the disaster area?

“We learned that our instinct, which was that it may not make sense for us to do something like that in the field, was right,” said Patrick Lynch, chief development officer at GEM. “We learned what works about our model and that having volunteers be a major part of the process at one of our hubs makes the most sense.”

“I have to say, it was very impressive,” Lynch said of the simulation, “in terms of its scope and how well organized and well run it was.”