The annual regional disaster relief exercise known as ‘Fuersas Aliadas Humanitarias’ (FAHUM) was held on Friday across the 16 Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency (CDERA) member states.
More than 10 agencies were in attendance at the National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC) located at the offices of the Department of Emergency Management (DEM) in Warrens, St. Michael.

This year’s exercise allowed the participants to test the response mechanism for pandemic influenza. A four member team from the Barbados Fire Service was in attendance for the exercise and coordinated the department’s response. Of significance this year was the use of the WebEOC incident management application during the exercise.

The WebEOC hardware and software is currently being installed at the Department of Emergency Management and members of the emergency services are expected to start training with the software soon.

WebEOC will be available for use during the 2009 hurricane season where it will be further tested and it is expected that the system will be fully operational in all CDERA States by the end of 2010.

A total of 25 countries are participating in FAHUM this year, the exercise concludes on April 25.