It is almost hurricane season, and that means several agencies are getting together and make sure they are all on the same page, same paragraph and same word of the emergency preparedness manual.  The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and emergency preparedness officials from the metro-area parishes today will conduct an exercise to see how well they all know the plan.

"We will have our local government liaison with all the coastal parishes, and we will run an operation with all our partners," said Maj. Tim Kurgan with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

It's not just the floodgates and pumps at the outfall canals that need testing.  Maj. Kurgan said that if they all cannot talk to each other, the system is worthless.

"We have hard line communication, of course, we have cellular phone communications," said Maj. Kurgan.  "We are on the police emergency net communication, and we have satellite phones."

Maj. Kurgan says in addition to testing hardware, they are also testing each other.  He says you can't plan or every contingency, but the more you train, the better you can handle the unexpected.

"There's always going to be a scenario that maybe you don't predict, but if you understand how this system operates and you understand all the mechanics and you have the redundancies, then yeah, you have the ability to react to any situation."