 Hello, I'm Javier Hernandez reporting from Washington. Hurricanes, terrorist attacks, snowstorms, floods. Disasters like these have impacted the federal judiciary's ability to maintain operations. With this in mind, the administrative office of the U.S. courts and two federal courts in the national capital region tested their emergency plans in a national exercise involving all three branches of government. Julie Irriondo has the story. And Hurricane Zoe disaster in the making on the east coast. On Tuesday, May 6th, Hurricane Zoe makes landfall at Newport News, Virginia. The category for storm is now bearing down on Washington, D.C. Within days of the initial chemical blast... Meantime in Washington state, a bomb explodes a chemical tank truck, killing 150 people and injuring more than 3,200. A credible threat of terrorism to the national capital region sends all federal departments to the highest state of alert, COGCON 1. These scenarios are part of Eagle Horizon 2008. Eagle Horizon is a national level exercise. And it's important because it gives all the executive branch agencies and the judiciary and the Congress a chance to test their COOP plans. COOP stands for Continuity of Operations Plan. For the administrative office, the focus is on communication. We're testing initially the alert and notification concept. That is, can we notify the members of our team in a timely manner and inform them of where to be at what time after we are notified that something is happening, something is going on. When disaster strikes, the judiciary emergency response team goes into action. JERT helps courts by coordinating response efforts. That includes relocating operations if needed. On this day, that's the case based on simulated threats. You're fine with proceeding with the defendants can appear there. But if you move out of state within another location, you're going to need to have defendants consent to do those proceedings anywhere outside the state. Meantime at the administrative office's alternate location, executives keep the deputy director updated on the agency's activities. Eagle Horizon is especially important for the Alexandria division of the Eastern District of Virginia. Here, COOP is in the early stages of development. And it's our first exercise to actually sit down and deal with scenarios and decide to talk about what we would do exactly in a COOP situation. Volunteer COOP mentors from the Court of International Trade in New York, the Southern District of New York, and the AO are on hand ready to offer advice and guidance. It's very important that your unit executives are all talking to each other, that there's good communication with the judges because the judges are the people who are going to make the decision on whether to activate your COOP or not. The D.C. Court of Appeals and the D.C. District Court established COOP plans several years ago, but staying current is an ongoing challenge. We learned that we have a lot of work to do updating information. We learned that we really need to get our newer employees up to speed on some things that we've had in place that have changed. We're finding out that there are a lot of holes in our plan, so the tabletop exercise has made us look at who we're going to call, what we're going to do. Testing is crucial to successfully execute COOP in the event of a crisis. And teleworking is still the best way to ensure that federal judiciary employees know how to work remotely. We have a lot of people in our office who telework, and so COOP is just folds kind of naturally into that. And in fact, when we're talking about relocation teams and people going to alternate sites, we can really streamline that because we can do an awful lot of work from our homes right now. Emergency planning isn't just for large disasters like Hurricane Katrina in September 11th. Just a few days before this exercise, a pipe bomb exploded at the San Diego Federal Courthouse. Simply put, COOP readiness is a necessity. Courts cannot afford to be unprepared. You want to be ready for an incident before it happens. You don't want to wait until something happens to say, oh, I should have tested this, I should have done that. We're part of what this country is about, the third branch. I mean, the judiciary, we have a constitutional responsibility to be up and running for business. Events like Eagle Horizon help the courts prepare for that responsibility. For Judiciary Now, I'm Julie Irriando. Reporting from Washington, I'm Javier Hernandez.