State and local emergency agencies began a large-scale drill Monday, which will continue through Wednesday to exercise how they would respond should a catastrophic earthquake again cause devastation in Tennessee.
 The exercise, known as TNCAT ’12 (pronounced TEN-CAT) began Monday morning, when Tennessee will experience a simulated 7.7 magnitude earthquake inside the New Madrid Seismic Zone near Memphis.
 This will initiate the start of an emergency that, were it real, will involve numerous state and local agencies, and private-sector concerns, and would affect thousands of Tennesseans and inflict hundreds of millions of dollars of damage across the state.
Tennessee Emergency Management Agency (TEMA) is the agency responsible for the state’s catastrophic earthquake plan and TNCAT ’12’s exercise design. It will focus on three areas of the state’s catastrophic earthquake plan: managing the process of obtaining and transporting life-saving supplies into the affected area; establishing emergency communications at the state and local level; and tracking the movement of medical supplies from a distribution point to a hospital.
Other state agencies participating include the Departments of Health, Safety, Transportation, Environment and Conservation, and Health and Human Services.

WCP 7.10.12