The worst hurricane that’s ever hit Rhode Island is on its way here this week — as the biggest federal hurricane-preparedness exercise ever conducted in New England.

The fictional “Hurricane Yvette” is designed to have all of the deadly power of the Hurricane of 1938, but it’s meant to test whether federal emergency officials have employed the lessons learned from their failures in handling Hurricane Katrina.

The script for the weeklong tabletop exercise is like a doom-and-gloom improvised game. All that the players know is that a Category-3 hurricane will start to head the state’s way tomorrow morning and, by midweek, will knock out Long Island and make its destructive charge up Narragansett Bay. Hurricane Yvette will travel much slower than the average New England hurricane — 13 mph, versus the average 33 mph — but that just means it’ll worsen the fictional destruction.

Inland dams will become overwhelmed and fail, flooding buildings and roads downstream. The coastline will be pummeled by strong waves and overcome by storm surge. Heavy rains and high winds will make roads impassable and down communication towers. And 130,000 people in Rhode Island will have to get out of the storm’s way. At the same time, other New England states will be crying for help and possibly sending their evacuees over each other’s borders.

But this exercise is not just testing the states’ preparedness — it’s testing whether the federal government is ready to respond.

The drill is one of several major emergency-preparedness exercises taking place across the nation over the next three weeks, under the authority of the U.S. Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security. Operation Ardent Sentry-Northern Edge 2007 is particularly focusing on communications systems, military forces and local National Guard units.

Under the direction of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, military and emergency officials are exercising several worst-case scenarios across the nation. Alaska faces a scenario of a ship with “suspicious cargo” that will have to be veered off, employing U.S. and Canadian forces. Indiana will deal with the detonation of a 10-kiloton nuclear device in an urban area.

And New England and New York state are facing down a threat that hasn’t been seen here in decades — a Category-3 hurricane that will follow the same destructive path as the Hurricane of ’38. The exercise begins tomorrow, when Yvette is “spotted” in the Atlantic and will continue through next Sunday.

The drill coincides with the “Hurricane Awareness Tour” kickoff by the National Weather Service and the arrival tomorrow of “Kermit,” one of the Hurricane Hunter aircraft used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to collect data on hurricanes. The Hurricane Hunter will be open for public tours tomorrow. (See story below.)

Rhode Island had already planned a one-day hurricane exercise with the Boston Region 1 office of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, until the Department of Defense heard about it and decided to expand it as part of the national exercises.

Federal officials want to know whether changes made since Hurricane Katrina could help them deal with another monstrous storm, said FEMA Region 1 spokesman Marty Bahamonde.

Katrina highlighted all the failings — from incompatible and unworkable communications systems to different agencies being unable to work together — and the federal officials want to know now, a month before hurricane season begins, whether the improvements work.

FEMA had a real-life preview in a northeaster a few weeks ago when it used its communications systems and coordinated calls with the states and federal offices. “We feel very good about where we are now,” Bahamonde said.

While Maine and Vermont are still dealing with the flooding from that storm, the other New England states and New York are participating in this exercise. Rhode Island volunteered to host.

“This is an extremely valuable drill,” said Robert J. Warren, executive director of the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency. “It’s going to test the guidelines they put in place after Katrina. I think it’s valuable for the state to go to this level, the national level.”

About 250 federal emergency officials are expected to arrive at the Cranston Street Armory, in Providence, this week to set up a joint field office to run operations and test their new communications systems.

The Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency and the Rhode Island National Guard are opening operation centers in Cranston. The hospitals are planning drills, with Newport Hospital setting up an alternate care site. Jamestown will practice setting up a evacuation shelter. The governor and his staff, the state Departments of Health, Transportation and Environmental Management, as well as most of the local emergency-management directors in Rhode Island, will also participate.

For the first time, Rhode Island will include representatives from local businesses, such as construction companies, to help with emergency response.

All four members of Rhode Island’s congressional delegation and U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who chairs the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Administration, are expected to tour the Armory and the state Emergency Operations Center on Friday. The exercise concludes next Sunday.

amilkovi@projo.com