 This is the best prepared state in the union, and I come from managing disasters of all 50 states. If you must endure a disaster, California is the place to be. On Monday, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit just outside of Palm Springs. Eight counties suffer severe damage, leading California's governor to declare a state of emergency. Pretty intense. Initial reports, hundreds of fires burning, tens of thousands of buildings damaged, and thousands of people injured. All of this, luckily, was a simulated exercise. So this exercise is to mimic that sort of event, and we are playing as we would on a bad day. A worst case scenario for every agency participating in Capstone. California's biggest exercise held each year, this time a four-day real-world exercise putting the state's leaders through the ringer. And it's how state coordinating officer Tina Curry can test California's catastrophic earthquake plan after years of development. So the notion that we're able to take it from the planning process to a semi-realistic scenario to have people here walking through the action is huge. It's huge in our readiness to have us prepared for this type of event or any type of event that might happen in California. So getting it to this point is absolutely necessary. The very agencies that would come together in an actual catastrophic disaster are here today. It does a couple things. One, it reinforces the partnership between the federal and state partners. It also lets us look at efforts that we've taken recently to improve California's response capability. And we get to play it out in real time to see if those efforts are working. Day one, initial federal and state responders gather at the State Operations Center at the California Office of Emergency Services. Calls between OES and local emergency responders in SoCal crystallize the understanding of the extent of damage. Take care of yourselves, be safe, and we're here to support you as best we all can. Thank you. Everything proceeds as it would in a real-life situation. That's tomorrow. What are we doing for tonight? We're just moving on the lawns. Are we doing more feeding? The main goal here is to assess the situation, gather the troops, and begin the long road to recovery. Reassuring the public that all hands are on deck is a top priority for Cal OES director Mark Gilarducci. There are a number of challenges that we are working with throughout the region. We have to let the public know what's going on and have to be able to give them good information so they can make good decisions in a disaster. Day two, the exercise moves to a larger coordination center where dozens of agencies are now in groups organized by their field of expertise. What I'm doing right now is I'm getting Department of Defense personnel to assist in the search and rescue aspect of the exercise. Military, state and federal agencies, public, private and non-profit groups are all playing their predetermined roles in disaster response. It's what's known as mutual aid. Mutual aid is a critical component of the state's emergency need. When we have large-scale events such as this, we need to be able to mobilize those resources and get them to where they're needed most critically. And without mutual aid, there's no way local government could handle it. So right now we have 58 counties in California that are responding to help, the eight that are affected. Power will most certainly go down during a large disaster so utility companies are represented here too. We have done this since 1952. Don Boland of the California Utilities Emergency Association has coordinated power restoration efforts after some of the most devastating disasters. In Sandy we had 14 different governors to work with, 14 different emergency managers, 14 different legislative and legal bodies. Here we have one. The process is streamlined by the design of the state. A plus in a sea of negatives coming in from the field. Managers have to overcome one unthinkable tragedy after another and government systems push to their breaking points, just as the federal coordinating officer had to do during the BP oil spill. We didn't have that unity of effort I thought, and so the key was trying to build that unity of effort. What we did was empower the locals, the local incident commanders. We continue to work very hard to save lives and minimize suffering. And external communications is just as critical. Red Cross continues to serve. The survivors serve this devastating earthquake with shelter, food, health and mental services. Federal and state public information officers sit side by side, sorting through the never ending influx of situation reports. Together they decide what they need to tell the public and when. It's important to coordinate a message because you want to make sure that it's a unified message. It's not just coming from one agency that we're working in partnership together to make sure that we're getting the accurate information out to the public. We have to all be on the same message and it has to be a message that the public, those that are affected by a disaster, can understand and make good decisions. If we've got perhaps the fire department saying one thing, the police department saying another, or perhaps not saying anything at all, that can be as dangerous as the actual disaster itself because the public needs to be able to expect that their first responders are competent. They can trust them and what they tell them is understandable and actionable. They can hear what's being said and go, okay, I'm going to make this decision for my family or I'm going to do this in a disaster. An exercise of this magnitude and perceived chaos can be overwhelming in the beginning, as it was for PIO Rob Mayberry. I'm absolutely amazed at the number of people that are in this room, the operations briefing room, just the sheer numbers and the amount of information that's leaving and coming into this room. This is Tim Britt's first exercise as operations section chief. His Marine Corps training helped him handle the most intimidating aspect of the test. You've got to make a decision and then you've got to own it and sometimes it's not always the correct one. No matter how long any one person has been doing this, there is always a lesson learned. I've been doing this for 35 plus years and there's always a takeaway from these tabletop exercises. It's good to know a person that you are working with now when things are status quo rather than trying to meet somebody during a crisis situation. Okay, so 72 hours after the earthquake, an 11 month old baby named Aliyah Kanda was rescued and reunited with her parents. Give yourself an applause. You helped with that. A message not lost on these hard working emergency managers is that the ultimate goal and the results of their actions are lives saved. Yeah, this is our home, this is our location, it's our terrain, it's our houses, our families, the people that are on the same soccer team with us, their families. So it's nice to know that if something happens that everybody we care about is taken care of.