Fire chief says Lodi responded well to COVID-19 pandemic
Emergency operations plan update examines how Lodi responded to event
This year, the City of Lodi was scheduled to update its Emergency Operations Plan, a document required to ensure local agencies are in compliance for reimbursement from the federal government in the event of natural disasters or emergencies.
In addition, Lodi Fire Chief Gene Stoddart said he was planning on presenting an updated plan for an emergency operations center to the council this fall, as well as conduct emergency training for city employees.
But the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic forced a premature, almost hit-theground running training period for the city.
“With the lack of training, the lack of follow-up with what we’ve done in the past, I’m very proud of the way our city got together and set up an EOC and ran this pandemic,” Stoddart told the Lodi City Council during last week’s shirtsleeve session.
He and Deputy Chief Ron Penix presented an emergency operations plan update to the council during the Wednesday morning meeting.
An emergency operations plan, or EOC, establishes the organization required to mitigate any significant emergency or dis
aster affecting a city, as well as identifies the roles and responsibilities required to protect the health and safety of residents, public and private property, and the environmental effects of natural and technological emergencies and disasters.
A plan also establishes a field response to emergencies, EOC activities and the recovery process involved once a disaster is over.
It’s been about five years since the fire department trained with city staff for any kind of emergency, Stoddart said, and state and federal government officials want emergency operation plan updates from each city every two years, with training completed on an annual basis.
This year’s emergency operations center, established in March at the beginning of the pandemic, and its accompanying plan, was to be the beginning of Lodi’s training, he said.
This is the fourth emergency operations center with which Stoddart has served during his firefighting career, and said the amount of training it takes to set one up and get it running efficiently is a lot of work.
He said would put Lodi’s team up against any of the previous EOC groups with which he has worked.
“When you think about fire service and police, we’re always well-involved in managing our own emergencies,” he said. “But taking somebody out of finance, out of the attorney’s office, all these different departments within the city — and train them and get them up to date in being able to run an EOC is a tremendous feat. This group stood up and delivered unbelievably.”
Since Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a statewide emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic, city staffers, first responders and community leaders met each weekday at 8 a.m. to review local, statewide and national statistics regarding confirmed cases and deaths from the virus.
The meetings took place in the newly-established Office of Emergency Services command center at Crete Hall inside Hutchins Street Square, and provided team members with a game plan mapping out logistics, resources and duties.
The team consisted of more than 30 city employees from the police and fire departments, as well as from the finance, public works, Internet technology and city manager’s offices. Staff from Lodi Electric Utility and the Lodi Public Library were also members of the EOC team.
“Typically we think of the police department, fire department, public works department (as emergency workers),” Penix told the council. “But as we saw in the current pandemic, even the library was utilized to open a a testing facility. So really all city employees or essential employees have a role in a true disaster.”
Other disasters to which the city is vulnerable, Penix said, include flooding and dam failures on the Mokelumne. Dams that could potentially fail are the Woodbridge Diversion Dam, Camanche Dam, and the Beggs Dam, a privately-owned earthen irrigation dam downstream from Lake Camanche, Penix said.
If any of those dams were to fail, Lodi Lake could be flooded and cause an emergency within city limits, he said.
Railroad accidents and natural disasters such as animal disease and agricultural catastrophes in the city are potentially high as well, he said.
“We run the risk of having a mad cow type of disease or the bird flu,” Penix said. “We have insects that can devastate our crops. Livestock and poultry products saw one of the largest increase in San Joaquin during the last year that data was available.”
If any of these disasters, or another massive wave of COVID-19 occurs in the city, Penix said residents will be alerted through notifications and messages via text and the Everbridge app.
The app provides information on emergencies, crime advisories and community updates through Lodi police and fire departments.
The city will also be able to notify visitors to Lodi based on their phone’s GPS location through the app, Penix said.
During the pandemic, Penix said the city did an exceptional job activating its EOC, ordering supplies, and ensuring workplace protections were in place for employees, and the community.
On Monday, Schwabauer agreed.
“We needed to be able to set something up quickly if we were going be able to ensure our employees were safe and we could continue to provide services to the community,” he said. “We did an amazing job providing (personal protective equipment) to all our departments so they could continue to serve the city.”
Since the pandemic began, the city has spent nearly $3.1 million to fight COVID-19 and provide much-needed services to the community, he said.
Of that total, $2.8 million has been used for the Great Plates program, which provides local seniors three meals a day through a partnership between the LOEL Senior Center and several Lodi restaurants.
Schwabauer said only $725,807 of that has been reimbursed through the Federal Emergency Management Agency.