OVERVIEW:

Joint All Hazards Assessment and Awareness Exercise (JAHAAX) is an annual emergency response and recovery event. This year the exercise will be facilitated by both the California Office of Emergency Services (CalOES) and the California Military Department (CMD). The multiagency training exercises the state’s Incident Awareness and Assessment (IAA) capabilities. The California IAA JAHAAX is a hands-on planning, tasking, collection, analysis, and sharing exercise with live flights, and includes communication and analysis requirements where participants demonstrate I exercise/ refresh the training they previously received. The exercise includes multiple militaries and civilian partners at the local, state, and federal level. It will address earthquake, tsunami, search and rescue, HAZMAT, geologic slides, and damage assessment scenarios. The ability to work with and understand multiple agencies will maximize the support the California IAA community can provide to the state. We plan to focus on coordinating during a large-scale event, sharing remotely captured data, and reinforcing the new communications capabilities demonstrated last year. 

Mission:

California Incident Awareness and Assessment (IAA) partners execute the Joint All-Hazard Awareness and Assessment Exercise from May 19th – 22nd, 2025. The exercise will take place at McClellan Park California. The purpose of this exercise is to execute conceptual operations improving the state of California’s IAA capabilities and providing this information to decision-makers and collaborators during disaster events.

Background:

This exercise was first held in 2015 and has expanded every year. Originally the training was exclusively a CALFIRE/CMD event that focused on wildland fire, but it has since expanded to an exercise providing support during various other types of disasters. JAHAAX would not be possible without the strong participation of multiple partner agencies. JAHAAX exercises cooperation between the various local, state, and federal emergency agencies. This is not an external evaluation or validation but instead and opportunity to work together closing capability gaps and building relationships.