Emergency Management – 2024
2024 Wildfire Evacuation Exercise
Overview
A week-long annual simulation where 32 county, state, and tribal agencies rehearse wildfire response from first report through recovery. My job was to make the scenario real enough that participants responded as if it were.
The Challenge
Exercises without convincing stimuli lack urgency. The county needed visuals that would push the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) into real decision-making and give inspectors realistic field conditions for testing Colorado's new Crisis Track damage assessment platform.
The Scenario: Nighthorse Fire
- Escalated from a Type 5 to a Type 3 incident, bringing the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Southern Ute Indian Tribe, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, City of Durango, Colorado Department of Fire Prevention and Control, and Durango Fire Protection District together to plan around multiple Values at Risk.
- Rapid growth threatened Bodo Industrial Park, triggering evacuation orders. Business owners were brought into the EOC to see the response firsthand and understand the stakes of having a preparedness plan.
What I Designed
-
Breaking-news broadcasts
Three stages of simulated news chiron videos tracking the fire's growth, played across EOC monitors to drive urgency during briefings and the business evacuation session. -
Post-fire damage imagery
Generated and heavily composited images of selected properties at varying damage levels, laminated and staked in front of each structure. Inspectors assessed them in Crisis Track, pre-loaded with county Assessor data (owner, assessed value, damage level), rehearsing the full path from field assessment to resident recovery.
Impact
"The realistic pictures were of great value to the assessment team as they worked through the program."
Shawna Legarza, Director of Emergency Management
Reflection
My standard was simple: "As real as it gets." It comes from my time in Microsoft's simulation games group, where realism drives both engagement and effectiveness. Good simulation training goes beyond muscle memory. It makes the emotional intensity of a real emergency familiar and manageable before it happens.
