Alabama Emergency Management Agency officials received an early wake-up call Tuesday and were told that a hurricane named Juliet had made landfall about 2 a.m. near Pascagoula, Miss.
Hurricane Juliet wasn’t real, but the fictitious storm gave the EMA, local officials and the National Weather Service a chance Tuesday to practice what they would do in the event of a real category 3 hurricane.
Most of the exercise took place at EMA headquarters in Clanton.
National Weather Service meteorologist John DeBlock said such a storm would likely have caused high winds, flooding and structural damage in south Alabama. The executive operations officer for the Alabama EMA, Jeff Byard, said the purpose of the exercise was to make sure Alabama officials were prepared for such a storm and were unified in their response.
Byard said exercise planners incorporated lessons learned from past storms that wreaked havoc on Alabama — Hurricanes Ivan, Katrina and Opal among them.
Byard said if an official needs information on the current location of a hurricane “you wouldn’t want 15 government agencies calling here.”
The main reason National Weather Service officials participate in the exercise if to provide weather information that will protect lives.
DeBlock said state and local officials often react during a storm “based on information we provide.”
“We are like the uninvited dinner guest,” DeBlock said of the weather service’s role in the exercise.
During the exercise participants gather in large rooms and are fed information such as the location of the hurricane and specific damage caused by the storm. They then reacted and provided information to other participants.
DeBlock said the exercise gives all involved a chance to get to know each other before there is an actual storm. For that reason lunch was provided at EMA headquarters other than letting everybody split up for lunch to give them another opportunity to get to know one another.
Kyle Eskridge, a branch director for EMA, said EMA branch offices in Troy and Mobile also participated in Tuesday’s exercise. He said there were about 170 people participating in the exercise.
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