"The New Madrid Seismic Zone Catastrophic Response Planning Initiative is well underway throughout the eight CUSEC Member States....the initiative will enable local, state, and federal agencies to create and adopt comprehensive plans that address responding to a catastrophic event along the New Madrid Seismic Zone. CUSEC, along with Member States, FEMA, Innovative Emergency Management, and the Mid America Earthquake Center, is helping to coordinate a series of local and state workshops that bring together key players in the planning process. The workshops are scenario-driven and inspire planners and responders to work together to come up with the plans. Arkansas is the first state holding the scenario-driven workshops, and all Member States will have completed their workshops by April 1, 2008. At the end of this multi-year initiative, there will be a series of exercises, at the state and regional levels, that will help validate the work that has been done. In most terms, this is the single, largest disaster planning initiative that has been undertaken in the United States". (CUSEC, "Catastrophic Planning Initiative Underway". Memphis, TN: CUSEC News, July 2007)