AWWA WSC61407

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) approached the City of Charlotte, North Carolina, to participate in catastrophic incident response planning for incidents involving 100,000 casualties. DHS plans to use the process followed in Charlotte as a template for planning for large cities across the nation. A tabletop exercise tested the plan and a gap analysis will be conducted to develop push packages of emergency supplies and responders to be dispatched automatically in catastrophic incidents where local assets will be overwhelmed immediately. Participating in the process were all the federal agencies under the DHS umbrella along with the DOE, the FBI, and military, numerous state agencies, and local agencies including Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities.