Emergency services: disaster preparedness.

Plain English Breakdown

Checked against official source text during the last sync.

Emergency Services: Disaster Preparedness

This bill requires the Office of Emergency Services (OES) to conduct biennial tabletop exercises and report on them, and it also mandates community disaster preparedness training in vulnerable areas.

What This Bill Does

• Requires OES to hold tabletop exercises every two years where emergency management personnel discuss and evaluate their plans under simulated catastrophic scenarios.
• Requires OES to use federal grant money to help cover the costs of these exercises for state, local, and tribal governments.
• Requires OES to report on each exercise's results to specific committees by February 1st of every other year starting in 2028.
• Cooperates with California Volunteers to conduct community disaster preparedness training in areas identified as vulnerable based on data from certain sources.

Who It Names or Affects

• The Office of Emergency Services (OES) and its partners
• Local emergency management personnel and agencies
• Communities in regions identified as vulnerable

Terms To Know

Tabletop exercises

Simulated disaster scenarios where emergency plans are discussed and evaluated.

Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) programs

Local volunteer groups trained to help during emergencies.

Limits and Unknowns

• The bill was vetoed by the governor, but lawmakers might still override this veto.
• It is unclear which specific communities will be prioritized for disaster preparedness training based on data from certain sources.

Official Summary Text

AB 1200, Caloza.
Emergency services: disaster preparedness.
Existing law, the California Emergency Services Act, authorizes the Governor to proclaim a state of emergency, and local officials and local governments to proclaim a local emergency, when specified conditions of disaster or extreme peril to the safety of persons and property exist. Existing law establishes the Office of Emergency Services (OES) within the office of the Governor and sets forth its powers and duties relating to responsibility over the state’s emergency and disaster response services for natural, technological, or man-made disasters and emergencies, including responsibility for activities necessary to prevent, respond to, recover from, and mitigate the effects of emergencies and disasters to people and property.
This bill would require OES to biennially convene key personnel and agencies that have emergency management roles and
responsibilities to participate in tabletop exercises in which the participant’s emergency preparedness plans are discussed and evaluated under various simulated catastrophic disaster situations, as specified.
This bill would require the tabletop exercises to be designed by OES to enhance the capabilities of the participants to do various things, including to engage the communities that they each serve, as appropriate, in the development of executable strategic, operational, or tactical-level approaches to meet defined disaster response objectives.
This bill would require OES to report on each tabletop exercise it conducts to the committees on budget, the Assembly Committee on Emergency Management, and the Senate Committee on Governmental Organization by February 1, 2028, and biennially thereafter of the calendar year following each biennial simulation and evaluation. The bill would require OES to use federal preparedness
grant funding to offset the state, local, and tribal government costs associated with participation in the tabletop exercises to the greatest extent possible.
The bill would require OES to, in cooperation with California Volunteers, coordinate with local Community Emergency Response Team programs to conduct community disaster preparedness training in vulnerable regions of the state, as specified, to, among other things, increase community resilience to disaster. The bill would require those regions to be identified based on data from specified sources. The bill would require a training event to include testing of community notification systems in the area and would require OES to prioritize that testing in specified communities.

Current Bill Text

Download Bill PDF