Anatomy of and lessons learned from a Canadian national-scale radiological exercise: ExIT-08

Exercise Initial Thunder (ExIT-08) was the fourth in a series of four emergency response exercises sponsored by the Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and Explosives Research and Technology Initiative (CRTI). It was designed to test the Canadian Federal, Provincial and Municipal response to a terrorist attack using radioactive materials. The complexity of this exercise had been increased over previous exercises to now include provincial and municipal players. As a result about 350 persons participated as players in the 4-day exercise that was held in two locations in the western part of Canada. This paper summarizes the experiences and the lessons learned of the Health Canada (HC) team.