60-plus deaths in fires, floods exposes weaknesses in state's emergency planning

A reckoning on public preparedness long in the making is underway in California after a year that saw unprecedented death, destruction and loss from disasters set off by extreme weather.

Though California has long experienced natural disasters tied to weather, the last year recorded a staggering human toll – more than 40 dead in wine country fires and more than 20 in Santa Barbara County mudslides.

The disasters revealed gaping holes in the state’s county-controlled warning systems – a mix of services from multiple vendors, subscriber programs with low participation rates, outdated landline lists, and a federal cellphone alert system so imprecise some emergency managers are afraid to use it. Public warnings failed to reach most of those in harm’s way, or understated the risk.

California emergency managers have released a critical review faulting Sonoma County emergency managers for failing to use all means possible to warn residents in October’s deadly fire siege. Evacuation orders went to only a fraction of the residents in limited areas, and managers quickly lost track of the fast-moving blazes, leaving entire communities in the dark about their danger.

But they warn that the weaknesses found in Sonoma County are not unique, and it is time for the state to wade into what has been a local matter.

“Some are better. Some are worse,” said Mark Ghilarducci, director of the Office of Emergency Services, the state’s disaster agency. “We have seen a lot of inconsistencies.”

State Sen. Mike Mcguire (D-healdsburg), whose wine country district was hit hard by the October fires, is pushing legislation that would mandate up-to-date warning systems. And Senate Charred wreckage of homes surrounds the John B. Riebli Elementary School on Oct. 18, 2017 in Santa Rosa.

Democrat Hannah-beth Jackson, from fire- and mud-ravaged Santa Barbara County, promises a bill that would override state privacy laws to automatically enroll residents in emergency notification systems.

“We have to do a statewide movement on preparedness, response and recovery,” said James Gore, Sonoma County’s chairman. “We don’t have to be quaking in our boots

that Armageddon is coming, but what we do have to do is get on our toes and manage into our future.”

The county last month received an independent report from the state Office of Emergency Services that found its ability to alert and warn its constituents before and during October’s deadly firestorm was “uncoordinated and included gaps, overlaps and redundancies,” exacerbated because administrators at the central emergency management center were cut off from commanders on the fire lines.

“During the early hours of the disaster, the county lacked reliable, timely and coordinated situational awareness as to the scale, size and scope of the fire’s growth, character, and movement,” the report stated.

But most of the state review is focused on Sonoma County’s failure – as fires swept over mountain ridges in the middle of the night and into sleeping suburbs – to use the national Wireless Emergency Alert system to broadcast loud warnings to every cellphone in reach of a tower. Sonoma Emergency Manager Chris Helgren, who was removed from the job days before release of the critical state review, said he was afraid a mass alert would trigger mass evacuations and block the narrow roads that firefighters needed to access.

Other disaster-struck counties also opted to not send mass cellphone warnings and relied instead on private vendor systems. In addition, The Times found, public warnings were delayed or underplayed. In Mendocino County, dispatchers held up alerts for a supervisor to drive in from home to eyeball the fires firsthand, and public warning sirens at a volunteer fire station were never sounded. In Napa County, a small percentage of the population was registered to receive warnings, and firefighters went door-to-door trying to wake residents.

In Santa Barbara County, emergency managers ignored the danger shown on their own in-house risk maps and told residents living in high-danger zones they were only under a voluntary “watch.”