Bill Text

Bill Information


Bill PDF |Add To My Favorites | print page

AB-1071 Office of Emergency Services: tabletop exercises.(2021-2022)

SHARE THIS: share this bill in Facebook share this bill in Twitter
Date Published: 06/29/2021 04:00 AM
AB1071:v97#DOCUMENT

Amended  IN  Senate  June 28, 2021
Amended  IN  Assembly  March 25, 2021

CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE— 2021–2022 REGULAR SESSION

Assembly Bill
No. 1071


Introduced by Assembly Member Rodriguez

February 18, 2021


An act to add Section 8608.5 to the Government Code, relating to emergency services, and declaring the urgency thereof, to take effect immediately.


LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST


AB 1071, as amended, Rodriguez. Office of Emergency Services: tabletop exercises.
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 manmade 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, 2023, 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.
This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.
Vote: 2/3   Appropriation: NO   Fiscal Committee: YES   Local Program: NO  

The people of the State of California do enact as follows:


SECTION 1.

 Section 8608.5 is added to the Government Code, to read:

8608.5.
 (a) Biennially, the Office of Emergency Services shall 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.
(b) The participants in the tabletop exercises shall include office shall invite government agencies, educational entities, military installations, private businesses, and nonprofit organizations that operate or own concerns in various sectors that provide fundamental services in the community that, when stabilized, enable all other aspects of society to function. These sectors shall function, to participate in the tabletop exercises. Those sectors include, but need not be limited to, all of the following:
(1) Law enforcement, private security, fire suppression services, search and rescue, government services, and community safety.
(2) Food, water, shelter, and agriculture.
(3) Medical care, public health, patient transportation, medical supply providers, and fatality management.
(4) Utilities and fuel.
(5) Infrastructure, emergency responder communications, alerts, warnings and safety messages, finance, 911 911, and dispatch.
(6) Hazardous materials management, facilities, pollutants, and contaminants.
(7) Transportation infrastructure, motor vehicles, mass transit, and railway, aviation, and maritime transportation.
(c) The simulated catastrophic disaster situations shall be based upon the following disaster response plans for incidents that could result in thousands of casualties, tens of thousands of evacuees, overwhelm state and local response capabilities, and severely disrupt lifeline infrastructure such as water, electricity, fuel, food, cellular communications, and transportation developed by the office and the Federal Emergency Management Agency:
(1) The Northern California Catastrophic Flood Response Plan (NCCFRP) 2018.
(2) The Bay Area Earthquake Plan 2016.
(3) The Cascadia Subduction Zone - Earthquake and Tsunami Response Plan 2013.
(4) The Southern California Earthquake Response Plan 2010.
(d) The tabletop exercises shall be designed by the office to enhance the capabilities of the participants to do all do, at a minimum, four of the following:
(1) Plan 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.
(2) Provide coordinated, prompt, reliable, and actionable information through the use of clear, consistent, accessible, and culturally and linguistically appropriate methods to effectively relay information regarding any threat or hazard, as well as the actions being taken and the assistance being made available, as appropriate.
(3) Establish and maintain a unified and coordinated operational structure and process that appropriately integrates all critical stakeholders and supports the execution of core capabilities.
(4) Manage the security and resilience of supply chains that deliver essential commodities, equipment, and services in support of impacted communities and survivors, including emergency power and fuel support, as well as the coordination of access to community staples. Synchronize logistics capabilities and enable the restoration of impacted supply chains.
(5) Conduct appropriate measures to ensure the protection of the health and safety of the public and workers, as well as the environment, from all hazards in support of responder operations and the affected communities.
(6) Provide transportation, including infrastructure access and accessible transportation services, for response priority objectives, including the evacuation of people and animals, and the delivery of vital response personnel, equipment, and services into the affected areas.
(7) Provide decision makers decisionmakers with relevant information regarding the nature and extent of the hazard, cascading effects, and the status of the response.
(8) Provide fatality management services, including decedent remains recovery and victim identification, working with local, state, tribal, territorial, insular area, and federal authorities to provide mortuary processes, temporary storage, or permanent internment solutions, sharing information with mass care services for the purpose of reunifying family members and caregivers with missing persons or their remains, and providing counseling to the bereaved.
(9) Provide structural, wildland, and specialized firefighting capabilities to manage and suppress fires of all types, kinds, and complexities while protecting the lives, property, and the environment in the affected area.
(10) Stabilize critical infrastructure functions, minimize health and safety threats, and efficiently restore and revitalize systems and services to support a viable, resilient community.
(11) Provide life-sustaining and human services to the affected population, to include hydration, feeding, sheltering, temporary housing, evacuee support, reunification, and distribution of emergency supplies.
(12) Deliver traditional and atypical search and rescue capabilities, including personnel, services, animals, and assets to survivors in need, with the goal of saving the greatest number of endangered lives in the shortest time possible.
(13) Ensure a safe and secure environment through law enforcement and related security and protection operations for people and communities located within affected areas and also for response personnel engaged in lifesaving and life-sustaining operations.
(14) Ensure the capacity for timely communications in support of security, situational awareness, and operations by any and all means available, among and between affected communities in the impact area and all response forces.
(15) Provide lifesaving medical treatment via Emergency Medical Services and related operations and avoid additional disease and injury by providing targeted public health, medical, and behavioral health support, and products to all affected populations.
(16) Restore and improve health and social services capabilities and networks to promote the resilience, independence, health, including behavioral health, and well-being of the whole community.
(17) Return economic and business activities, including food and agriculture, to a healthy state and develop new business and employment opportunities that result in an economically viable community.
(18) Protect natural and cultural resources and historic properties through appropriate planning, mitigation, response, and recovery actions to preserve, conserve, rehabilitate, and restore them consistent with postdisaster community priorities and best practices and in compliance with applicable environmental and historic preservation laws.
(e) (1) The office shall report on each tabletop exercise it conducts pursuant to this section to the committees on budget, the Assembly Committee on Emergency Management, and the Senate Committee on Governmental Organization by February 1, 2023, and biennially thereafter of the calendar year following each biennial simulation and evaluation.
(2) A report to be submitted pursuant to paragraph (1) shall be submitted in compliance with Section 9795 of the Government Code.
(f) The office shall, to the greatest extent possible, use federal preparedness grant funding to offset the state, local, and tribal government costs associated with participation in the tabletop exercises described in this section.

SEC. 2.

 This act is an urgency statute necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, or safety within the meaning of Article IV of the California Constitution and shall go into immediate effect. The facts constituting the necessity are:
Due to the ongoing threat of the COVID-19 pandemic, catastrophic wildfires, earthquakes, floods, and other hazards that could require the deployment of a massive amount of emergency response resources, it is necessary that California enhance its planning for catastrophic emergencies immediately.