Jordan: The National Safety Path (3) exercise begins today to determine the readiness of institutions to deal with earthquakes

Weather of Arabia - The National Center for Security and Crisis Management, in cooperation and coordination with various state institutions, the armed forces and security agencies, is implementing the national exercise “Path of Safety.”

Today, Monday, the activities of the National Safety Path (3) exercise, which is implemented by the National Center for Security and Crisis Management, will begin over two days, to determine the readiness and readiness of public and private institutions to deal with earthquakes and their repercussions.

The center announced the activation of sirens between 9:55 and 10:05 a.m. today to announce the start of the “Safety Path 3” exercise.
The exercise comes to test national capabilities in response and rescue operations, ensure the resilience of vital infrastructure and mechanisms for receiving and distributing aid, and update relevant databases, as well as dealing with awareness messages at the time of earthquakes, to ensure the continuity of daily life during and after the occurrence of earthquakes.

The exercise is accompanied by evacuation and rescue operations, closures, sounding of sirens, and a security presence in several areas around ten in the morning, without affecting the course of public life.

The National Center for Security and Crisis Management said last Wednesday that the exercise simulates an earthquake in Jordan, as it includes the evacuation of vital facilities, including dozens of schools, in addition to how to receive aid.

The director of the media response unit at the center, Ahmed Al-Naimat, explained to the Voice of the Kingdom program that the center seeks, through its implementation of the exercise, to “test the extent of readiness of national institutions and the inter-coordination among them, and to focus on integrating the private sector and volunteers.”

The national exercise “Safety Path 3” is part of the center’s national agenda to test the updated national plan to deal with the earthquake threat. Preparation for it has begun since the beginning of this year, and the pillars of this updated plan were completed last June, according to Al-Naimat.
The date for implementing the exercise was approved in the second half of September, “until our schools have returned to their normal hours, as we will test the evacuation of dozens of schools in this context in most of the governorates of the Kingdom,” Al-Naimat said.

In addition to "focusing on evacuating vital facilities from factories containing dangerous materials, evacuating schools, and evacuating commercial facilities" at the beginning.

Al-Naimat pointed out, “Focus on testing sending smart awareness messages, such as choosing specific areas to send text messages to, which are geographical areas that do not exceed 2-3 kilometers.”

He talked about testing sub-plans for the continuation of the state’s work, such as electrical outages and how to avoid them, and communications outages,” pointing in this regard to “plans with telecommunications providers, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, and the Ministry of Digital Economy, as we have mobile towers that are used in the event of a communications outage. These will also be done.” Test it in practice.

The other goal of the exercise is “to test the national plan for receiving aid if we have any emergency,” according to Al-Naimat, who said that “receiving aid itself in a time of crisis is a complex crisis that must be trained on in terms of who will receive this aid, who will distribute it, and who will classify it.” ".

The aim of the Safety Trail 1 was to test the national plan for dealing with refugees and terrorist incidents, and the Safety Trail 2 was to deal with the leakage of dangerous materials, according to Al-Naimat.

The national earthquake plan was amended more than once due to “drawing lessons learned from what happened in Turkey and Syria,” noting that the exercise was scheduled to take place before the earthquake occurred in these two countries.

Al-Naimat said that “a specialized team from the center studied the weak points that occurred in the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria,” and the center issued recommendations to the Prime Minister, including “providing the main bakeries with backup generators, for example, and ensuring the existence of an updated database for medicines that need to be preserved at specific temperatures.”

He explained that there were 3 teams to evaluate the exercise, one of them national, the second international, “specialized from several countries in the world and organizations specialized in crisis management in the world,” and the third from the National Center.