FEMA's National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) had funded a Pacific Coast convening of earthquake emergency program managers — an annual gathering that builds cross-jurisdictional coordination capacity across state lines. The original scope called for a Pacific Island-focused meeting, but vacant territorial emergency management positions made the original plan impossible to execute.
The grant deliverable was at risk. The convening hadn't happened, funding was obligated, and the existing design couldn't move forward. CREW needed a pivot that preserved the grant's intent — building cross-jurisdictional coordination — without the geographic scope that had become impossible to execute.
TLR redesigned the scope in collaboration with CREW — shifting from a Pacific Island focus to a Pacific Coast convening that would bring together earthquake program managers from Alaska, California, Oregon, and Washington, alongside FEMA Regions IX and X leadership. The new design was both achievable and arguably more impactful: the Pacific Coast states share Cascadia subduction zone risk, and their EPMs had limited forums for direct coordination.
The convening was held over three days in Anchorage — chosen in part because Alaska's earthquake program sits at the intersection of Cascadia, Pacific Northwest, and Alaska Range seismic risk, making it a natural convening point for cross-state coordination.
TLR led end-to-end facilitation: agenda design, stakeholder pre-engagement, site coordination, structured roundtable facilitation, site visits to the National Tsunami Warning Center (NTWC), Alaska State Emergency Operations Center, and Alaska Geological Archives, and documentation of outcomes and commitments.
The facilitation design prioritized outcomes over process — every session was structured to produce a specific artifact: shared understanding, documented commitment, or actionable next step. The three-day format was dense and deliberate, not a networking event with sessions attached.
The FEMA NEHRP deliverable was preserved — not as a workaround, but as a genuinely better outcome. A Pacific Coast convening of 15 EPMs from four states produced five documented, state-level programmatic commitments for 2024–25, and established CREW as a cross-state coordination platform rather than a California-focused organization.
The relationships built in Anchorage persist. State EPMs who have worked through scenarios together and made commitments face-to-face operate differently than those who only know each other as contacts in a directory. That's the coordination infrastructure the Cascadia region needs — and it didn't exist at this scale before this meeting.