Multiple federal, state, and local government agencies, along with other non-government organizations and private business and industry gathered in Salina to participate in a a large-scale emergency preparedness exercise on Thursday. The “Silver Jackets” table top exercise was held at the Webster Conference Center.

The purpose of the program was to bring technical expertise to the community to conduct a large-scale, discussion based exercise focusing on flood and levee safety.

“Silver Jackets” was a full day exercise which covered several aspects of emergency response and community recovery based off of a large flood scenario. The scenario was a wide scale major flood event, stemming from a catastrophic rain and subsequent water release from Kanopolis Reservoir.

The exercise, which was coordinated by the U.S. Corps of Engineers and Saline County Emergency management tested several elements of the county emergency operations plan, and built relationships among community partners.