The U.S. Fire Administration and FEMA have just released a valuable new tool aimed at helping communities better prepare for wildfires: the Wildfire Evacuation Tabletop Exercise Starter Kit. Designed to help local officials and emergency planners design and conduct their own evacuation drills, the kit is now available for use nationwide.
This Exercise Starter Kit (ESK) provides local jurisdictions and organizations with a ready-to-use package of materials to practice coordinated wildfire evacuations—an increasingly critical skill as fire seasons grow longer and more intense. Tabletop exercises like these have proven to be one of the most effective ways for communities to identify gaps, improve coordination, and build resilience in the face of fast-moving fire emergencies.
Built by FEMA and the U.S. Fire Administration, the toolkit walks users through a series of planning considerations, discussion prompts, and operational challenges that local teams can work through together. The goal is to help emergency managers, law enforcement, fire departments, transportation agencies, and public information officers practice their wildfire response across four key mission areas: Planning, Physical Protective Measures, Critical Transportation, and Public Information and Warning.
The Wildfire Evacuation Tabletop ESK is broken into five scenario-based modules, each reflecting different stages or challenges of a wildfire event:
- Module 1: Firewatch
- Module 2: Ready, Set, Go
- Module 3: Reentry and Return
- Module 4: Rapid Growth
- Module 5: Refuge
These modules allow communities to customize their exercise based on local risk factors, geography, and response capabilities.
With wildfires increasingly threatening both rural and urban communities, FEMA’s new exercise kit provides a critical tool for helping local governments build muscle memory before disaster strikes.
Click here to learn more and download the ESK.
(AI was used in part to facilitate this article.)