WS2 - Enhancing Emergency Preparedness and Planning for Dam Incidents: Improving Dam Safety and Coordination Through Realistic Scenario-Based Tabletop Exercises

Emergency planning preparedness for dam incidents is essential to protect human life, property damage, disruption of lifeline facilities, economic loss, and environmental damage. With the average age of regulated dams in the United States over 65 years, combined with increasing impacts and consequences resulting from dam failures, are we doing enough to prepare?

Emergency Action Plans (EAPs), prepared by dam owners, focus on the dam operator’s responsibilities to monitor, react, and notify the community of dam incidents. However, EAPs do not address how the jurisdiction’s emergency manager implements its jurisdictional Emergency Operations Plans (EOP) in response to an emergency. Although many state dam safety programs require exercises, these exercises commonly test only the EAP notification flowcharts and do not assess the follow-on activities that are the responsibility of emergency managers and first responders. These gaps in emergency planning and preparedness, specifically for dam incidents, are common and show that more should be done to prepare.

As part of the Preparing for Dam Emergencies Collaborative Technical Assistance (CTA) program, FEMA helps communities at risk of dam-related flooding to better understand their risk landscape, assess the potential consequences of dam incidents, and address gaps in emergency planning and preparedness. The CTA program, co-led by the National Dam Safety Program and Resilience Analytics & Capacity Development Division, began in 2018 and has been successfully delivered in 11 states and territories. This effort brings together state and local emergency managers, dam owners and operators, dam safety professionals, public safety officials, government representatives, and other interested stakeholder groups to prepare in advance of a dam incident or event (e.g., earthquake, tsunami, hurricane) that may stress dam operations.

The CTA delivery includes a scenario-based dam incident tabletop exercise designed to test emergency planning documents, demonstrate areas of strength, and identify areas for improvement related to the integration and coordination between the various plans. The use of a realistic scenario maximizes the engagement of all participants during the exercise and emphasizes the full consequences of dam failures, which are more than just the population at risk in the dam breach floodplain, but also includes impacts to critical infrastructure, community assets, and the economy. Participants learn that not all dam risks can be mitigated by the dam owner and that emergency planning and preparedness is a critical part of managing residual risk and making communities more resilient against possible, and in some cases inevitable, dam incidents.