A multi-city disaster exercise
Orange County’s Harbor Region encompasses the cities of Newport Beach, Irvine, Costa Mesa, and Laguna Beach, as well as the University of California, Irvine. Overseeing an urban area with significant daily population movements, the County and Harbor Region Emergency Managers must be ready to coordinate a joint response at any time. To practice that coordination, Emergency Managers across Orange County came together to hold a county-wide evacuation exercise, gauging the effectiveness of various response strategies while giving real-time orders to responders.
Simulating response strategies with Ladris
Using Ladris, the Emergency Managers were able to test the effectiveness of proposed response measures, including contraflow, road blocking, and shelter location placement. Learning from these simulations, they measurably improved response capabilities, ultimately designing a response to reduce maximum worst-case trip times from almost five hours to three and a half — a nearly 30% decrease.
These simulations were executed by fire departments, law enforcement, emergency management, and the Coast Guard working in sync across city jurisdictions. The Ladris platform allowed these agencies to coordinate in real time, enabling effective collaboration among local, state, and federal partners during a complex, multi-city evacuation. Building on the exercise, the Harbor Region continues to drill with Ladris to produce evacuation estimates, tactics, and insights as a baseline for gauging response capabilities.