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State Exercise Program

HSEEP Program Image 

Exercises play a vital role in national preparedness by enabling whole community stakeholders to test and validate plans and capabilities, and identify both capability gaps and areas for improvement. A well-designed exercise provides a low-risk environment to test capabilities, familiarize personnel with roles and responsibilities, and foster meaningful interaction and communication across organizations. Exercises bring together and strengthen the whole community in its efforts to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to and recover from all hazards. Overall, exercises are cost-effective and useful tools that help the nation practice and refine our collective capacity to achieve the core capabilities in the National Preparedness Goal.

The exercise program in Oregon follows the federal Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) model and is intended to provide a solid base for state, local, and tribal partners to evaluate their policies, plans, and procedures, as well as meet the requirements of the Emergency Management Performance Grant (EMPG) and the Homeland Security Grant Program (HSGP).

Your Exercise Program should be tightly linked to your Training Program. For information about training, please see our State Training Program. 

Information on HSEEP, including current templates can be found on FEMA Prep Toolkit Website:  https://preptoolkit.fema.gov/web/hseep-resources.


The EMER process is used by the Oregon Department of Emergency Management to track completion of exercise requirements. ​These requirements are set by Oregon Revised Statute (ORS) 401.116(3)(a) and Oregon Administrative Rule (OAR) 104-010-0005 for the Emergency Management Performance Grant (EMPG).

For instructions on completing an EMER report and managing EMER submissions, please refer to the “2024-2025 EMER Guidance Document."​
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2024-2025 EMER Guidance Document​​​​​

​Submit an EMER​​​​​​​​

​The Oregon Department of Emergency Management Exercise Program is offering an initial contact survey form to our partners at State, Local and Tribal agencies who may require assistance in identifying the types and levels of exercise support they may need from OEM Exercise Program staff or other relevant subject matter experts to design, develop, conduct, and evaluate an exercise. ​​​​​

​For more information about receiving technical assistance, please refer to the "ExTAP​​ Guidance Document."
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ExTAP Guid​​​​ance Document​​​​​​

Submit an ExTAP ​Initial Contact Form​​​​

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The Emergency Management Institute (EMI) conducts a monthly series of Virtual Table Top Exercises (VTTX) using a video teleconference platform to reach community based training audiences around the country and provide a virtual forum for disaster training. The VTTX process involves key personnel from the emergency management community of practice reviewing a pre-packaged set of exercise materials then convening for a four hour table top exercise discussing a simulated disaster scenario. The event allows the connected sites to assess current plans, policies and procedures while learning from the other connected sites as they provide their perspective and practices facing a similar situation. A standard VTC system is required for participation.​

See EMI's VTTX Webpage here for more information: https://training.fema.gov/programs/emivttx.aspx​

The 2025 NEP Application Window is now OPEN through March 1. Use the following resources below, and please send any applications to the OEM Exercise Program prior to sending to FEMA National Exercise Division so OEM and FEMA 10 can assess if we are able to support exercise events. OEM Exercise Program is available to support development of applications – please reach out for support!

The National Exercise Program (NEP) serves as the principal mechanism for examining the preparedness and readiness of the United States across the entire homeland security and management enterprise. The purpose of the NEP is to design, coordinate, conduct, and evaluate exercises that rigorously test the Nation’s ability to perform missions and funcns that prevent, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards. As a component of the National Preparedness System, the NEP provides a consistent method to examine and validate federal and whole community partner core capabilities, which in turn indicate the Nation’s progress in reaching the National Preparedness Goal.

​Each Program cycle consists of a two-year, progressive schedule of exercises that are selected based on their support to the Goal, and the Program’s Principals’ Objectives. The types of exercises selected into the program may include facilitated policy discussions, seminars and workshops, tabletop exercises, modeling and simulation, drills, functional exercises, and full-scale exercises. All of which may be sponsored by organizations from any level of government, non-governmental and private sector, and the whole community.​The National Exercise Program also provides contractor support, free of charge, to assist in development, conduct, and documentation your exercise. It does not provide additional funding to cover other exercise expenses.

For more information on National Exercise Program, click here.​​​

The Oregon Department of Emergency Management (OEM) Exercise Program has been awarded an EMPG funded project to support individual exercise events hosted by local EMPG eligible jurisdictions and tribes. This budget can be made available to provide staff/personnel the opportunity to build topic subject matter expertise and host exercise events.

​ ​Exercise Funding Support Guide
Exercise Funding Support Application​​​


Contacts:

Robert Quinn, CEM, MEP
State Exercise Officer
971-345 -7698

Zachary Glenn
Exercise Specialist
971-719-0841

For general questions, contact: 





PSAP-911 Center Disaster Recovery Plan Tabletop

The OEM Exercise Program has collaborated with the Statewide Interoperability Team to develop a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) tabletop exercise focused on Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs)/911 Centers. This exercise has three modules that include cascading impacts to a PSAP/911 Center with questions that encourage participants to validate their existing DRP. The templates need some local-focused data to make it relevant to you, but has the structure already created! 

Questions? – reach out to the OEM Exercise Specialist, Zachary Glenn (zachary.glenn@oem.oregon.gov).


Download Module Templates (.zip)


Quarterly Exercises

OEM hosts quarterly exercise events to provide State ECC staff and statewide emergency response partners the opportunity to practice together on a regular basis.

Past Meeting Materials:

Facilitator(s)
Robert Quinn
Meeting Materials
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