Today was an historic day for North Carolina in terms of emergency training and preparedness. Officials at the city, county, state and federal levels, as well as the university and private sectors, came together to practice and learn how each agency would respond to a terrorist attack in our state.
The discussion-based exercise was held at the direction of Gov. Bev Perdue, who wanted to bring these leaders and agencies together with the common goal of making us better prepared and able to respond to such a manmade disaster.
Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton, Attorney General Roy Cooper and more than 100 leaders participated in the exercise, including state legislators and representatives from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Investigation, State Bureau of Investigation, local universities and private industry.
The end result is that we gained a better appreciation of how each agency operates and interacts with one another. Lessons learned will be applied to help us to be better prepared, coordinated in our responses and able to communicate more readily.
On behalf of the Governor and the Department of Crime Control and Public Safety, I thank all who participated and continue to invest their time into this critical effort.