So hey everybody, my name is Zane Kennedy. I'm the state planning manager as well as the earthquake program manager with the Tennessee Emergency Management Authority. Thanks all for having me and congratulations, Scott.

But I'm just going to do a quick little presentation on our relatively new earthquake hazard mitigation committee. The way that planning here at TEMA works, we have it kind of split between regional planning and state planning. I'm over the state planning side, which includes like our Tennessee emergency management plan, the hazard mitigation plan.

And then on the other side, on regional planning, they work with the counties to do their plans and their basic emergency operations plans. So as part of state planning, we are in charge of state hazard mitigation plan. Talon Bishop is on as well.

She's kind of leading that as the hazard mitigation planner. So she works a lot with the various subcommittees and the state hazard mitigation big committee. But this one that we're talking about today is just kind of a subcommittee for earthquakes.

This is the newest one, I believe. It was founded in 2025. I believe it was shortly after we had like a small 4.2 earthquake, I believe it was in East Tennessee.

And I think that kind of lit a fire under a few people saying, hey, what? There's all these hazard mitigation subcommittees. Why not one for earthquake?

It seems so common sense, but there hadn't been one for some reason. So we decided to establish that in 2025. There you go right there.

So it's a. Oops. Yeah. And Brian, I think you said this is like one of Tennessee might be the only one so far. Yeah, I know. I know other states do have seismic safety commissions, which you have in Tennessee as well. but not necessarily a specific earthquake mitigation committee led by the state. Yeah, I was surprised to hear that. And afterwards, if other states do have some other kind of mitigation committee like this, I'd really like to hear who has one and what does that look like for you guys. So, like I said, Salvation 2025, it includes a whole bunch of partners.

TDOT, our Department of Transportation, Department of Human Services, TDEC, which is our environmental and conservation, which includes our state geologist office in that. It also includes our TEMA mitigation, which is different from the mitigation planning section. It also includes kind of regional folks.

We have TEMA's, or Tennessee is divided into four regions. West Tennessee ordering Madrid, we include those. They're very helpful, vital partner.

Of course, QSEC and then CERI, the Center for Earthquake Research in Durham, Memphis. And then Shelby County is a little local addition. We love to include Shelby County and they love to be included in our earthquake planning.

So it's relatively new. Again, starting 2025, we were meeting every month for a little while. We had some presentations.

I believe it was Lori Croy, the Missouri Insurance Commission. I had the chance to attend the Missouri Earthquake Summit. It was a couple years ago now, but I really thought that presentation was valuable.

So I had her, I asked if she could come and she was kind enough to join and present their findings that they did, that they found in Missouri to our hazard mitigation committee. Trying to think of kind of projects that we wanted to do. I think an insurance summit was valuable to look into.

And so we got some value out of that. And then, of course, Cusick, Brian, you touched on RBS. That's a very big project here in Tennessee.

We continue to do it. I think it's been our fourth or fifth year now doing it. But we'll continue to.

Is it four or five? Yeah. Yeah. We started initially in earnest in 2022, I think. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. i know y'all did like a pilot program before then it was it was successful and it's just kind of exploded since then um but then of course we do we discuss kind of the education part of an awareness so including great shakeout just going over kind of the key partners again um it's a state statewide multi-agency collaboration so So it helps bridge all sorts of these different kind of fields. Of course, you have QSEC with kind of the partnerships with the states and all the work that QSEC does, CERI, our geology folks, and then even to TDOT and local EMAs.

So it's a wide variety of partners that we've included. That's really the only way that statewide mitigation can really be effective. So we've met a few times.

We've come up with this long, long-winded mission statement. I won't read the entire thing because then we'll leave time to get off. But I kind of simplified it down here.

But our most recent one, we hadn't met in a little while, So I wanted to bring it back and say, hey, let's come up with a mission. Let's figure out what we want to do. And I took notes and there was three occurring topics that each person went through.

One of those was building awareness. Just because people might not know that New Madrid exists. They might not know that the East Tennessee seismic zone exists.

Investing in those outreach opportunities, workshops, those coordinated messaging between all those different stakeholders that I just mentioned earlier. And then another one was promoting practical mitigation strategies. Ryan's RBS findings were very valuable, giving those counties kind of mitigation strategies that they could use.

I think you always mention it, kind of like the low-hanging fruits, the automatic gas shutoff valves, the straps. Those are valuable mitigation strategies that we could share and help spread awareness about with those counties that have done RBS. And then supporting state and local plans that kind of involves, As I mentioned earlier, Timo West is included in our committee, and we have a regional planner out there.

So with him working with those counties to include those projects identified within RBS is, I think, would be huge. I'd like to kind of work towards that with this work group. And then just connecting the mission to the ultimate goal, reducing the long-term earthquake consequences to Tennessee.

And so that includes all the building, the awareness, promoting those mitigation strategies. So like I said, this is going to be just a short little presentation. This is my last slide.

Future opportunities. I think those public outreach events shake out local government participation. I'm really glad that we have Shelby County participating.

That's very valuable. We can get that kind of local perspective on what they're looking at. I'd also like to, in the future, start including maybe East Tennessee State University.

Getting some East Tennessee participation, I think, would be very valuable. Because it's not just the New Madrid has a mitigation committee, it's the Tennessee Earthquake has a mitigation committee. So I think that would be valuable.

And then just expanding on that technical assistance, having those regional planners work with the counties to kind of explain to them, here's how you put this stuff in your plan, here's how you do the projects, and just helping them with that technical expertise. And then just the committee involved, like I mentioned earlier, involving and seeking more broad statewide involvement, whether it be in East Tennessee, whether it be other state agencies. I think we're in our infancy, but I think this is a very good, valuable group to be a part of.

And so we're ever growing. So that's all I had. Any questions?

I would like to ask again if there's any other states out there that have something like this similarly, I would be interested in hearing. But if not,