greetings, my fellow americans. for the last couple days i was out of town at an "hseep exercise training".
yes, i realize you're jealous and want to know how you, too, can enjoy this type of spa-sounding experience. but hold on, don't start lining up just yet.
of course we all remember sept. 11 and the nation-wide emergency response system that was born out of it. (interestingly enough, based on the methods of fighting wildfires out west--involving the use of an incident command structure, etc etc)
hseep is actuallly u.s. govt. acronym-speak for "homeland security exercise evaluation planning."
now do you get it? no? i didn't either, and i had to go spend 2 9-hour days trying to do it!
by friday afternoon my brain had turned to alphabet soup.
the trainig centered around a massive 3 ring binder filled with modules, and power points with slides so small i couldn't read the print, even with my cheater glasses, and an a to z list of acronyms that was 5 pages long! and the instructor used them constantly, talking about nims, and eoc's, and pheps, sop's, eeg's, aar's, ics, and about being sure to share your mesls (pronounced measles) with all the prime players. hearing that made me smile--but only the first few times of the hundred or so times i heard it!
the gist of the training was learning to plan disaster exercises in order to practice emergency response and evaluate and improve emergency preparedness--for any type of disaster--be it terrorism, natural disaster, pandemic influenza, blah, blah, blah.
i know this doesn't sound like something a public health dept. would be involved in, but depending on the type of emergency we might be right in the thick of things.....oh joy.....i even have to carry a cell phone for emergency call-in these days. nine-eleven changed so many things for so many of us, didn't it? and i don't mean for the better.....
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