All right. Yeah. Well, so I'm Chris White. I am the earthquake specialist for the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services. Like I said, I've been in this for a couple of years now and just kind of want to give a brief overview of our 2025 grant portfolio. I'll kind of go over the proposal timeline and methodology, then provide a brief overview of the great work that we do with our partners throughout the state with Nehrop funding, obviously. and finished up with a quick review of Cal OES's largest outreach event of the year, the Great California Shake-out Tour.

But first, let me explain why we exist, why the earthquake program exists at all, and how we get this near funding. So California has over 15,000 identified faults, 500 of which are classified as active. 30 million Californians live within 30 miles of an active fault. The latest annualized earthquake loss is estimated between $9 to $10 billion in California. So it's evident that we need to prepare, mitigate, and respond effectively to earthquakes and their seismic hazards.

It's going to be critical to saving lives moving forward. So that's exactly where NEHERP comes in and helps us help Californians to mitigate and respond to earthquake hazards.

Everybody on this call is pretty familiar and acquainted with the NEHERP program. It seeks to mitigate earthquake losses by improving understanding of earthquake processes, developing cost-effective measures, and improving the earthquake resilience of communities. We here in California are designated as very high for the reasons I just outlined. And so each year, we invite organizations to submit proposals for consideration to continue expanding on the different partnerships and then also explore innovative new creative proposals that might become pilot projects.

A quick overview of the timeline. December 4th, 2024, we got the notice of intent email from FEMA the same day we replied saying we're intending to apply. December 10th is when we send out the project solicitation email to our partners. that it was for FY25. You can see an example of that on the right-hand side. We give them around a month, month and a half to get their proposals together. We receive proposals on January 17th, and then we go through kind of a rigorous methodological review process, and then we develop internally something called the FGAS, which is the Federal Grant Application Summary.

That's just to allow us to prepare in advance of the NOFO, get all of our executives to to review it go up the approval chain uh in the hope that the nofo is kind of similar to the to the one years past but if not if the budgets change or there's new requirements or uh there's new allowable activities then we revise the documents as needed but as i'm sure it is for everybody it's a month-long process um and we get it done by the deadline which uh for 25 was the The NOFO was released in 28. The deadline was August 11th, and we received the award letter on September 27th. And again, everyone's familiar with this, but here in CaloES, when we send out the solicitation email to our network, which includes NGOs and tribes and schools and everybody across California, We really try to hone in on broad reaching scope and the ability to be replicated throughout the state.

Obviously, all the activities need to be allowable within the NOFO and being cost effective is critical.

So within our methodology, once we receive those proposals, we have three people review each proposal independently. you're seeing on the screen to take out any type of sensitivity for our projects or proposal folks are just random examples they these did not exist but as you can see this reviewer richmond last name

reviewed each one of the proposals along with the categories that we identified as the most important so alignment with allowable activities cost effectiveness and overall achievable impact For the first proposal, you see 4, 3.5, 4. Second proposal, 3, 4, 2. And then once I get the, then they all, each of the three independent reviewers submit their results to me and I collate them.

So as you can see, Richmond, Bryce, Xavier, again, made up. They provide their results. I collate them into an average reviewer score or overall score for each proposal that we receive. And then we rank the proposals by highest score, which in this case provided us with these fantastic partners for our FY25 projects.

They constitute the pillar of the earthquake education and outreach community throughout California. I'll step through each briefly to explain why. But really, at OES, we want to kind of create an ecosystem of partners that interweave, if possible, and create the strongest network so that we can make Californians prepared and ready to respond as effectively and efficiently as possible. So as you just heard, Mark talk, the University of Southern California and SCEC, drive ECA, and ECA, Mark is the founder.

We work, I talk to him once a week, and we work very closely with them. The ECA is kind of here in California, the earthquake nexus for coordination and education and outreach, especially in Central and Southern California. They're in Northern California, but we have another partner that I'll talk about next, who is a really trusted source up there. But whether it be at conferences or academic institutions, outreach events, if you need materials, ECA is brought up consistently as an institution to contact.

So their support within OES cannot be overstated. They have three regional alliances, Southern, Central, Bay Area. They have coordination committees. They collaborate with the Redwood Coast Tsunami Work Group, which I'll talk about next up north. They have webinars. They're training.

They're traveling constantly, setting up workshops. If someone contacts us and our staff can't make it, we reach out to Mark and ECA to say, hey, can you help us out? They are a constant partner, always there, ready to help out. They also have education outreach materials for folks. It's kind of an online catalog style order form to serve as a one-stop shop for local governments and nonprofits, very, very useful and helpful.

But two of the biggest projects, Mark just went over the kind of national global shakeout.

We also have the Secure Your Space projects. So each year, ECA and Cal OES coordinate these projects, which improves safety by providing fastening straps and putty or cabinet latches and similar items to non-profit workplaces, schools, tribes, and other locations across California. Applicants can get up to $500 in fastening materials, and the ECA will provide printed and video guidance for how to properly install all the fasteners, plus online technical support, virtual meetings, review instructions.

It's an incredible Herculean lift, but it really helps the applicants install the fasteners or whatever they received appropriately. And part of the requirements of receiving the funding is that they take photographs of whatever they install to make sure that they're installed correctly. Or ECA, rather, reviews those photographs and makes sure, and if there's anything that needs to be updated, they call them back. Again, it's a lot of staff hours.

It's very intensive, but it's one of the most tangible projects that Californians receive goods and will protect themselves from one of the most dangerous elements of seismic hazards, which is non-structural structures becoming projectiles during shaking. And then again, Mark just went over this. ECA Spearheads, along with the coordination of the Great California ShakeOut, It's the largest in the nation. There's a, like in 2025, there were over 10.4 million Californians that registered.

ETA provides all those incredible graphics, including the one I'm sharing now on the screen.

Yeah, just again, cannot be overstated. And then the Disaster Resistant Business Toolkit Workgroup, DRBTW, they're another partner. I don't want to go too deep into what they do because Ines will be talking tomorrow. Unfortunately, I won't be here. But this particular project, the Earthquake Strengthening Program, in 2025 is focusing on senior service centers. DRBDW takes these kind of marginalized communities.

It was food banks and prior knee-harp years. This year, it's SSCs, the senior service centers. So they take these kind of marginalized communities that traditionally wouldn't apply to federal funding, and they step them very carefully, very methodically through a laborious process to achieve tangible results to try to get those federal grant funding opportunities. There are tens of thousands of senior service centers in California, or there's tens of thousands of seniors that rely on senior service centers in California. This year, DRPDW will conduct 6 to 12 non-structural risk assessments and 3 to 5 structural risk assessments.

In the past years,

DRPDW has educated, trained, and provided technical assistance for 17 food banks. They've had over 10 sub-applications submitted and approved by Kyle OES, four of which have been approved by FEMA for over $2.5 million. So again, just as a force multiplier, they're a great partner.

cal poly humboldt if uh we kind of think about eca is the glue of central southern california and they definitely have a presence in northern uh cal poly humboldt is the trusted source uh up in the very northern north of california the humboldt eureka and they are a key strategic and geographic partner in the most seismically active region in the lower united states so they are constantly person at regional workshops or providing regional workshops at state fairs in universities, giving speeches, doing fun activities like kind of science fairs. So there are constant presence. We weigh on them heavily. They interact with ECA by providing support of North for the Great California Shakeout.

They do these kind of innovative pastels in the parking lot and just are constantly engaging. They also provide guidance to county emergency professionals. So we had a tsunami scare. There's a 7.0 off the coast of Mendocino in 2024, December 5th. There was a 20,000 visitor spike to Redwood Coast Tsunami Workgroup's website, which just underscores that people trust them and go to their website for guidance. They also published the Living on Shaky Ground magazine, which has been a foundational tool for outreach and educational messages throughout the community.

Over 18,000 copies have been distributed across the North Coast. So again, trusted partner and geographically strategic for us here at Cal OES. So DRBDW also has another project with us. They do these resilient workplace workshops for small and mid-sized businesses, which are really particularly vulnerable to unplanned disruptions. And that results in high earthquake risk that could potentially experience catastrophic losses. So for this year, or in FY25, they will conduct three workshops, and they step these businesses through their DRBT toolkit.

It's simple but very effective, and they step them from workshop to workshop through that toolkit to be able to come up with their own continuity plans. Again, in the past, the resilient workshops have been conducted with 838 attendees overall. 53% of them have registered for online tools. 31% are developing plans. And the project itself has leveraged other funds from U.S. Chamber of Commerce, UPS Foundation, and the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes, FLASH. So,

again, they're engaging small businesses and midsize folks to be able to get a more comprehensive coverage throughout California. The California Geological Survey is our other and last partner for FY25. They are the scientific authority for our state. They coordinate information exchange and data in real time between CalOES and other agencies. And one aspect in which they do that is through the clearinghouse. The clearinghouse has a proven history of working to identify earthquake mitigation opportunities. They send out scientists and engineers and other specialties into the field within 72 hours to assess life safety after an event. So what they're going to do this year is they're going to come in and do a presentation to our state operations center, make sure everybody here at Cal OES is well aware of the clearinghouse's purpose and value.

And they are also creating six videos online, one to two minute videos to spread by social media to kind of do myth busting around some material that folks get confused about. So those will be evergreen and will be able to last for years.

For us at the Earthquake Program, you know, we have a little bit of near-hurt funding to manage it and get our staff out to various outreach events. We go to Fleet Weeks, which will get 3,000 to 4,000, 5,000 people a day with our Earthquake Simulator. We're constantly engaging with online webinars or at various outreach events, one of which is, and the biggest outreach event of the year, is the Cal OES Great California Shakeout Tour. which I'll get into now. Last year was on October 16th, but basically the ShakeOut drill, as Mark just described, is when millions of people worldwide participate together at work, school, or home.

I'll jump into what we did last year. At OES, we'd identify different locations to to go to leading up to shakeout day so last year you'll see on your screen October shakeout day with the 16th Thursday October 16th we start on Monday October 13th we're at we're in UC San Diego then the San Francisco Zoo on the 15th at a university Cal State Fullerton and on the 16th in San Diego at the waterfront we start planning and preparing months in advance we get to these sites each day We're there at 4 a.m. We're setting up the earthquake simulator, which provides a simulated 7.0 magnitude earthquake. People love it. I'll show you some pictures and video.

But we get there early enough so that we could set everything up, be ready by 5 a.m. And our staff and our public information office are there to conduct media interviews throughout the state. So we reach millions of folks via traditional media and our social media presence.

The central focus is always education and outreach. So we're talking about drop, cover, hold on, downloading MyShake, securing your space, making a plan. Colleges are always ideal venues. And you could see here that kind of one of our setups, we have a booth and earthquake simulator. As I said, we're engaging local community members. We have the LA in a minute is one of our influencers.

He had 69,000 views based off of one post. You can see some of our staff over there with all of the materials that we have in our booth. I'll play a little bit of B-roll that we got through our public information office. So you can see the earthquake simulator shaking up and down. It really gives you a good sense of what you can expect in your living room, why you wanna secure your space.

And I can skip forward here a little bit. This is our state operations center. They're conducting their own drill, drop cover, hold on. People are getting underneath. That's happening here again in the state operations center. And just, yeah, we get kids, everybody gets really energized.

and it's kind of a fair-like atmosphere, but a lot of education outreach going on.

And then on the day of, we partner up with ECA. Last year, ECA was in Los Angeles City at the Emergency Operations Center and in Oakland City at City Hall. We also have, as I said, our own activities here at headquarters.

In 2025, these are the metrics that we use to see how we did. So we had 12 of our staff participating in six events across four cities in California. Again, over 10.4 million folks registered for ShakeOut in California. We had over 200 people going through the simulator, over 20,000 MyShake downloads. In 2026, we're going to start in San Francisco State University, go to Sacramento State, be in UCLA on October 14th, and on ShakeOut Day, be in San Diego at La Plaza de Panamá.

And hopefully we will be partnering up with ECA again and their partners for the events in Los Angeles, potentially a high school and at Hayward City Hall in the Bay Area.

So that was a quick overview. Thank you for your time. Let me know if there are any questions and I'll stop sharing. Thank you much.