Virginia has sent a team of 14 All-Hazards Incident Management Team personnel to the National Emergency Training Center in Emmitsburg MD for a pilot AHIMT National-Tier Assessment Exercise. The class is taking place September 12 – 15, 2022. The National Capital Region IMT sent seven members, the Central Virginia IMT sent one member, and the Hampton Roads IMT sent six members.
The USFA R-325, AHIMT National Tier Assessment Exercise is a four-day capstone exercise developed to reinforce, refine, and emphasize the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to successfully manage Type 3-complexity-level incidents that fall into the National Tier of the USFA 3-Tiered Preparedness System.
The exercise is designed for highly functioning, fully credentialed Type 3 All-Hazards Incident Management Teams (AHIMT) that have local and regional deployment experience—in the future, before teams are accepted to attend the R-325, they will have undergone an on-site visit, as well as a review of their team documentation.
Only Virginia, Texas, and Ohio were invited to send a 14-person team to this training. In addition to taking the class, the participants will evaluate and suggest changes to the curriculum. Their feedback will be incorporated into the final curriculum.
The purpose and goal of the R-325 exercise is to provide an opportunity to prepare Type 3 qualified All-Hazards Incident Management Teams (AHIMT) to successfully function, and to assess their functioning when assigned to an incident deemed a National Tier deployment as described in the USFA 3-Tiered Preparedness system.
The National Tier Assessment Exercise provides multiple opportunities for AHIMT members to practice critical thinking skills on many of the topics identified as essential to managing an all- hazards incident, and then enables them to develop or refine their plans, processes, and procedures to effectively manage those topics.
After successfully completing the R-325 exercise, AHIMT members will be more capable of successfully managing National Tier deployments, and better prepared to do so.
