Preparing for Typhoon Letao

Participants at USP in Long Island for RMI’s inaugural Typhoon Tabletop Exercise spearhead by IOM. Photo: Laura Freeman
Participants at USP in Long Island for RMI’s inaugural Typhoon Tabletop Exercise spearhead by IOM. Photo: Laura Freeman

KELLY LORENNIJ
Among the exercises conducted during last week’s two-day typhoon tabletop exercise, participants were able to draft an initial response plan, produce a situation report and learn how to request international disaster assistance. The tabletop provided time and space for all stakeholders to think about emergency situations in a non-disaster setting to work toward a safer and more resilient Marshall Islands.

Part of the exercise included standard operating procedures for disaster risk management focusing on rapid onset hazards. By simulating a typhoon-caused disaster, the tabletop took participants from the initial weather statement that would lead to an advisory on an incoming tropical depression, the tracking of a tropical depression, and onto storm warning and storm watch following the depression’s landfall.

Read more about this in the December 7, 2018 edition of the Marshall Islands Journal.