E-PAGA and FEMA

E-PAGA is proud to announce the successful completion of a 2.5-year project with FEMA’s National Dam Safety Program in training, exercise, and facilitation support. Specifically, E-PAGA has been supporting dam incident exercises for the Collaborative Technical Assistance (CTA) Program.

The CTA Program enables communities to learn from dam-related subject matter experts how to increase their preparedness prior to real-world dam incidents. For this project, E-PAGA worked with two CTA cohort communities each fiscal year by guiding an exercise planning team through the iterative process of FEMA’s Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) and providing each CTA cohort with a capstone exercise at the end. E-PAGA facilitated virtual training to build the CTA cohort’s baseline knowledge of HSEEP and dam incident exercises, preparing them for future exercises outside of the CTA. Each community received a packet of tools and templates to assist them during the program and for the work within their own communities for years to come. The CTA cohorts also participated in an exercise scenario development workshop, which was created to train community leaders to craft their own exercise narratives to ensure their future dam incident exercises would be realistic, effective, and valuable.

Main objectives accomplished:

• Exercise development, management, and facilitation
• Development/facilitation of virtual training exercise sessions for CTA participants
• Development of exercise tools and templates
• Creation and facilitation of an exercise scenario development workshop

Example support products created:

• Two-hour virtual training on “Dam Incident Tabletop Exercise Development”
• HSEEP planning meeting templates, tailored to dam incident exercises
• Dam incident tabletop exercise situation manual and presentation