Emergency Management
Building a County Exercise Program Starting From Scratch
Brief #
OB-2026-5
Date Prepared
On Period
Winter 2025
Status
Active
Population
~13,000
Region
Western Wisconsin (Mississippi River)
Plan Structure
Annex-Based
Key Hazard
Recurring Flooding (Hwy 35)
Applicable to
Emergency Management
Fire Departments
Public Health
Probably the most productive, best tool I've had at my fingertips since I've entered the emergency management world.
Steven Wall
Director of Emergency, Risk & Safety Management
Mission Outcomes
Within months of adoption, EM1 transformed how Buffalo County approaches exercises and planning:
Rapid Exercise Development
Produces structured tabletop exercises with objectives, injects, and trigger points in minutes instead of months.
Exercise Planning Time
Months → Minutes
Comprehensive Coverage
Surfaces best practices and discussion topics that experienced planners praised as exceeding expectations.
Coverage Confidence
Uncertain → 90%
Standards Alignment
Crosswalks local annex-based plans against CPG 101 and hazard mitigation standards to identify gaps proactively.
Crosswalk Capability
Manual → Automated
1
Situation
Steven Wall's first year as Buffalo County's Emergency Manager was, in his own words, "pretty scary." A relatively new entrant to the profession, he inherited a rural western Wisconsin county with a small staff, recurring flood exposure along the Mississippi River corridor, and multiple agencies asking him to run exercises he didn't know how to build. State and federal support for training and exercise development was minimal. The agencies kept calling. Wall kept stalling, convinced that a credible tabletop exercise required "six to eight months of planning" and months of research he simply didn't have time to conduct.
Frozen at the Starting Line
A new emergency manager facing exercise requests from every direction with no training support, no templates, and a conviction that credible exercises required months of lead time.
The pressure was compounding. Buffalo County uses an annex-based plan structure rather than ESFs, making federal templates an awkward fit. A FEMA-related grant lawsuit had thrown the county's funding timeline into chaos, turning January into what Wall described as a scramble of compliance deadlines and deferred projects. He needed a way to produce exercises quickly without sacrificing credibility.
2
The Turning Point
Wall's first test of EM1 was a regional excessive heat tabletop exercise led by public health across multiple counties. He ran the scenario through the platform beforehand and arrived at the table with a structured plan covering objectives, discussion prompts, and trigger points. The facilitator, a WEM regional director, told him he "really knocked it out of the park" and praised the breadth of topics the exercise covered. Wall had deliberately kept EM1's role quiet. When he revealed at the end that he'd used the platform to build the exercise, it confirmed something important: EM1 was producing work that met or exceeded what experienced planners would deliver.
Validation by Peers
A WEM regional director praised Wall's exercise coverage before learning it was built with EM1, confirming the platform produces expert-level output.
That validation changed his posture. "When people ask for exercises now, I can say 'let's do it,'" Wall explained. The months-long planning cycle he'd feared had collapsed into hours.
3
Execution
The real proof came during a spring flooding tabletop for Fountain City, where Highway 35 regularly floods along the Mississippi. Wall built the scenario in EM1, specifying the hazard, location, and desired outputs, then walked into a meeting with DOT representatives and the city mayor. He started with open-ended questions and got blank stares. So he pivoted: he pulled up the EM1-generated exercise on screen and walked the group through objectives, trigger points, and staged action items. The structure unlocked the conversation. A planned two-hour meeting ran to two and a half hours because engagement was so high, and the group ultimately asked Wall to run the exercise formally.
From Blank Stares to Buy-In
When open-ended discussion stalled, Wall pulled up the EM1-generated exercise structure. The meeting ran 30 minutes over because engagement was so high.
Tabletop Exercise Builder
Crosswalk Builder
CPG 101 Alignment
Step-by-Step Prompting
4
Partnership
Wall draws a sharp line between EM1 and other vendors. He recounted telling representatives from his county-wide alerting provider at the WEMA conference that their software didn't meet the mark and demanding a one-on-one session to make it work. Months of cancelled appointments later, he went to his county committee on January 8 to recommend dropping the product entirely. EM1, by contrast, feels like "more than a product." He describes the team as a resource that includes not just platform capabilities but direct access to subject matter experts for planning, ICS, and exercise design.
More Than a Product
Wall contrasts months of cancelled support calls from another vendor with EM1's responsive, collaborative team that he describes as feeling like family.
5
Assessment
In a matter of months, Wall went from dreading exercise requests to actively seeking them out. What previously required months of research now takes minutes to draft and a half day to refine into something he considers just as good. EM1 surfaces angles and best practices he wouldn't find on his own, reducing what he calls the "human error" of one person trying to think of everything.
From Dread to Drive
A new emergency manager who once froze at the word "exercise" now treats every request as an opportunity, with a Fire Chiefs tabletop and a 5-year mitigation plan on deck.
With a Fire Chiefs Association tabletop in the pipeline and plans to build an all-hazards mitigation plan for 2027 through 2031, Wall is still early in his use of the platform. But the trajectory is clear: a new emergency manager who once froze at the word "exercise" now treats every request as an opportunity.
January 2026
EM1 Implementation
Began using EM1 for exercise planning
Near-Term
Fire Chiefs Tabletop
Upcoming exercise with Fire Chiefs Association
2027-2031
All-Hazards Mitigation Plan
Multi-year planning initiative using EM1
