2024 NATIONAL MASS CARE EXERCISE (May 2024)

The 2024 National Mass Care Exercise, called Keystone 6, was held in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania on May 21-23, 2024. The scenario involved large scale impacts cascading across the region and need for mass care services for 100,000+ people. Pennsylvania stood up a commonwealth managed shelter and activated operational/planning mass care task forces for Feeding, Sheltering, Disability Integration, Reunification, Household Pets, Distribution of Emergency Supplies, and Housing. Read more about mass care in Pennsylvania at www.dhs.pa.gov/masscare.

2023 NATIONAL MASS CARE EXERCISE (November 2023)

2020-2021-2022 NATIONAL MASS CARE EXERCISE

The 2020, 2021, and 2022 National Mass Care Exercises were not held due to COVID 19 restrictions.

2019 NATIONAL MASS CARE EXERCISE AAR/IP (November 2019)

The National Mass Care Exercise 2019 was a functional exercise conducted August 26-29, 2019 at the Illinois State Emergency Operations Center in Springfield, IL. The exercise used a task force concept and examined mass care-related recovery issues following a significant earthquake in the New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ). Specifically, the exercise focused on planning in the areas of sheltering, feeding, and reunification in four main timeframes: 2-15 days, 15-30 days, 30-60 days, and 60-90 days post-earthquake.

2018 NATIONAL MASS CARE EXERCISE AAR/IP (MAY 2018)

The Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs, in collaboration with FEMA NED, conducted Arizona’s 2018 National Mass Care Exercise series on May 21-24, 2018. The exercise series included a Tabletop Exercise (TTX) and a Full-Scale Exercise (FSE) designed to inform the State of Arizona’s emergency management partners of mass care capabilities from response plans, policies, and procedures. Numerous agencies also hosted component Workshops, TTXs, Functional Exercises (FE), and FSEs from their respective agency’s’ venues to examine federal, state, tribal, county, local, non-governmental organization (NGO) and private-sector plans and capabilities.

2017 NATIONAL MASS CARE EXERCISE

The State of Utah hosted the 2017 “There’s No Place Like Home” National Mass Care Exercise from Aug. 22nd-24th, in Salt Lake City, UT.
The exercise built off of the Wasatch Earthquake Catastrophic plan with the focus of the exercise play on the coordination at the State EOC ESF#6 desk and the many mass care activity’s liaisons. Field play was primarily coordinated by the Red Cross and included the setting up shelters, activating the multi-agency feeding task force, bulk distribution sites, and a potential non-resident evacuation embarkation site. In addition, the customary task forces (MC Activity Groups) strategized on the topics of feeding, sheltering, bulk distribution and reunification.

2016 NATIONAL MASS CARE EXERCISE

Missouri hosted the 5th National Mass Care Exercise in August 2016. This exercise was based on a catastrophic earthquake in the New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ) and tested the Joint State of Missouri and FEMA Region VII NMSZ Earthquake Response Plan and Missouri’s evacuation and mass care plans.

The primary goals of the exercise were to build Mass Care Capacity by supporting the training of State Mass Care Coordinators to understand the roles and responsibilities of a mass care coordinator, convene Missouri Evacuation Management Team/Task Forces to provide coordination and decision making to support evacuation of multiple local level jurisdictions, and also to develop a consistency in approach to allow them to support each other through the EMAC process.
Further, participants implemented the Mass Care Task Force Concepts for Shelter, Feeding, Distribution of Emergency Supplies, and Reunification to support statewide operations. The exercise encouraged integrated access and functional needs support as well as pet support into evacuation and mass care operations.

2015 NATIONAL MASS CARE EXERCISE AAR (JULY 2015)

The 2015 National Mass Care Exercise was conducted June 8-10 in Austin, TX. This exercise, designated Critical Mass 2015 was the first to be hosted by another state, Texas, and one with a non-hurricane scenario. The Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM) must be commended for their perseverance in hosting the exercise while they were fully involved responding to a major flooding event. Even with the constraints, over 75 Mass Care/Emergency Assistance providers actively participated in the NCME representing the whole community: the public, non-governmental organizations, all levels of government and the private sector. No two NMCE’s are the same, the scenarios vary, the objectives are based on what the state would like to test, and the players vary based on the Region and the focus of the exercise. The exercise provided an excellent opportunity to build relationships, provide needed Mass Care/Emergency Assistance training, and a chance to strengthen and develop task force criteria.

Following are some of the commonly expressed thoughts found in feedback from the 2015 NMCE:

• It would be most beneficial if states had standing Task Forces already in place into which national partners could be inserted. 
• States need to provide Task Forces with precise direction about what they should be accomplishing.
• All of the Task Forces need to be linked to a common operating picture.  
• Task Force Leaders need training on how to manage Task Forces.  
• Every state is different and consequently it may not be possible to have a “one-size fits all” protocol for Task Force operations.

2014 NATIONAL MASS CARE EXERCISE AAR (AUGUST 2014)

The 2014 National Mass Care Exercise was conducted in conjunction with the 2014 Florida Statewide “Hurricane Jones” Exercise sponsored by the Florida Division of Emergency Management. Over 100 players, controllers and evaluators representing all levels of government, nongovernmental agencies, the private sector and academia participated in the mass care portion of the exercise. Additionally, FEMA and the American Red Cross established response operations off-site to simulate coordinating elements that would be in effect in a real event.

As part of the 2014 exercise, Florida’s Emergency Support Function (ESF) 6 exercised four Mass Care task forces. These task forces included the:

•  Shelter Task Force (STF)
•  Feeding Task Force (FTF)
•  Distribution Task Force (DTF)
•  Reunification Services Task Force (RSTF)

2013 NATIONAL MASS CARE EXERCISE AAR (May 2013)

The 2013 National Mass Care Exercise was conducted May 20-23, 2013 in Tallahassee, Florida in conjunction with the 2013 Florida Statewide Hurricanes “KIRK and LAY” Exercise. Sponsored by the Florida Division of Emergency Management, FEMA and the American Red Cross, 60 players, controllers and evaluators representing the whole community and all levels of government, nongovernment and private sector agencies participated. This Exercise built upon the experience of the 2012 Hurricane Gispert Exercise, the largest national mass care exercise ever conducted.

The 2013 exercise further refined and developed the mass care task force concept. The state only established 2 mass care task forces but each task force (feeding/sheltering) had its own multiagency plan and its own operational procedure, which included checklists for the task force leader and other positions assigned within the task force.

2012 FLORIDA HURRICANE EXERCISE MASS CARE AAR (JUNE 2012)

The Mass Care portion of the Florida 2012 Statewide Hurricane Gispert Exercise was the largest state mass care exercise ever conducted in the nation. The Exercise was conducted May 21-24, 2012 in Tallahassee, FL.  Sixty-four players, controllers and evaluators from 26 federal, state, nongovernmental, private sector and academic agencies representing the whole of the community participated in the exercise. The scenario of a major hurricane threatening the densely populated urban communities of the Tampa Bay region allowed the participants to address a broad expanse of the Mass Care Services Core

The 2012 exercise built on the mass care task force concept and the lessons learned with the Feeding Task Force in the 2009 Hurricane Suiter Exercise. For this exercise the State established 3 mass care task forces: feeding, sheltering and distribution of emergency supplies. An operational procedure was developed and tested for the feeding task force.

2009 HURRICANE SUITER ESF6/MC&EA AAR (June 2009)

In May 2009 during the State of Florida Hurricane Suiter Exercise a State Multiagency Feeding Task Force was established in order to begin to gain consensus on the mass care task force concept. The exercise also tested the draft Mass Care Feeding and Sheltering Annex to the State of Florida Catastrophic Plan. The difficulty of the scenario, the large number of participants, the variety of federal, state, voluntary and private sector organizations involved and the realistic design created an intense and demanding exercise. Although not billed as a national mass care exercise, the Hurricane Suiter Exercise became one.