CALIFORNIA COLLABORATIVE TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE SAN DIEGO COUNTY COHORT In 2019, FEMA and the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) launched the Collaborative Technical Assistance (CTA) Program with San Diego County California. CTA is designed to help communities at risk of dam-related flooding better understand their risk landscape and the potential consequences of dam-related emergencies. The CTA included planning for emergencies related to operational discharges or dam-related infrastructure failure. Members from the FEMA National Dam Safety Program, and National Integration Center’s Technical Assistance Program worked with the CalOES and California Department of Water Resources to meet the county’s goal of increasing state, county, community, and individual preparedness in participating jurisdictions for responding to dam emergencies. The CTA assisted San Diego County and participating jurisdictions in leveraging and building upon CalOES’ previous and ongoing dam and levee safety initiatives. The San Diego County CTA offering provided: •
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A structured approach to developing or refining dam emergency action plans (EAPs) to increase community preparedness for a dam emergency and integrating the EAPs into appropriate emergency planning documents; Access to National level subject matter experts that provided guidance and offered feedback on dam risk management, emergency planning, community analysis, dam inundation modeling, infrastructure dependencies and interdependencies, hazard mitigation, floodplain management, risk and crisis communication, and exercise planning; Peer-to-peer learning opportunities from fellow dam owners and emergency managers that had experience performing inundation modeling, dealing with an actual dam emergency, communicating during an emergency, and dam-related planning other issues.
From November 2019 to May 2021, nine sessions were hosted for over 250 participants. In addition, four office hours were conducted which allowed
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participants from San Diego County to meet with subject matter experts to go over topics discussed throughout a session. The San Diego County CTA included individuals from multiple organizations including federal, regional, state, and local agencies and jurisdictions, along with one non-governmental partner. This cohort was originally scheduled to be a combination of in-person delivery and virtual sessions, however, due to COVID-19, the delivery of the CTA changed to be fully virtual. Session topics included: •
Session 1 – Framing the Issues: Community Analysis and Infrastructure Dependencies
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Session 2 – Modeling and Simulation using Decision Support System for Water Infrastructure Security (DSS-WISETM) Lite
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Session 3 – Community Resilience & Dam Risk
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Session 4 – Information and Planning Gaps for Emergency Response and Emergency Action Planning
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Session 5 – Risk and Crisis Communication Strategies for Dam Emergencies: Virtual Workshop & Tabletop Exercise
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Session 6 – Evacuation and Shelter-in-Place Planning for Dam Emergencies
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Session 7 – Planning and Implementing an Exercise for a Dam Incident or Emergency
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Session 8 – San Diego County Dam Safety Tabletop Exercise
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Session 9 – CTA Closeout and Evaluation
Sessions were interactive and encouraged participation and collaboration between attendees to help them build relationships with one another. Attendees were provided access to subject matter experts, models, tools, and templates that allowed them to enhance their knowledge of dam safety and dam incident operations. Each session was designed to touch on at least one of San Diego County’s objectives that were decided on during the initial Kick-Off meeting. The objectives of the San Diego County CTA were for the cohort to: •
Form an active dam emergency planning working group, which includes core stakeholders for this CTA.
