Tuesday, July 7, 2009

National Level Exercise: Ex North Star VII




Singapore is currently working on a 3 day duration national level emergency management exercise, codenamed "Exercise North Star VII", which will see the involvement as well as actual deployment of various Home Front agencies (think Police and the Singapore Civil Defence Force).

Held annually to test the Home Front agencies' capabilities as well as response level, this series of exercise also aims to educate as well as seek the involvement of various strata of the common population. Such joint exercises will thus allow all involved agencies and government entities to better understand their own capabilities as well as seek improvement in their delivery standards in the event of a real crises.

So, what's this year's scenario based on? From what I roughly gather (thanks to my busy shift schedule) it will generally involve a "rouge" terrorist body moving across the island.

Judging by the level of planning involved, there's no denial that the responding agencies are definitely taking this whole nation-wide exercise seriously. How do I know? Well, while returning home from my night shift this morning, I was already caught in a 1 hour jam along a major expressway (for Singapore's traffic standard, that's rather long, considering our nation's geographical size). Look at the picture above, and you'll see (look carefully) a convoy of police patrol cars on the left lane, which I took from my Samsung PDA phone (not bad picture quality for a 2 mega-pixel unit, right?).

Stay tuned for more updates.

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