SANTA CRUZ — Six months after the CZU August Lightning Complex fire swept through more than 86,000 acres and destroyed upward of 900 homes in northern Santa Cruz County, skies are bluer for Emergency Services Manager Rosemary Anderson.
That’s not strictly because residents are experiencing clean air and record high temperatures in December instead of lung-filling ash and burnt orange flames to high heaven, but also because the county and its community partners have learned the value of fortifying and funding the jurisdiction’s disaster preparedness operations.
Today
Two weeks before dry lightning and high winds sparked devastating wildfires throughout California, scorching nearly 1 million acres across the state, Anderson was notified that her position was being eliminated. The plan was that her responsibilities would be parsed up and placed on the shoulders of existing County Administrative Office employees; Anderson’s colleague Karen Adler would also move to the Government Center offices. Anderson leveraged retirement at the end of the year in lieu of being laid off.
While she is still leaving, a move Anderson hadn’t expected would be necessary to make after five years with the county, the idea of eliminating the position was scrubbed in October.
After the fire had been contained, the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors had a revelation many county leaders are actively having themselves: It’s not smart to underfund or eliminate an Office of Emergency Services, Anderson said. This was the “good news” of the year.
“You’re never going to achieve what you lose by eliminating that function,” she said. “They did learn through a consult with Sonoma County, who had done something similar before the fires in 2017. (Before) they had a budget for their Office of Emergency Services that was about $600,000 and now it’s funded to the tune of $6.5 million. What they gained from that… was that investment more than paid for itself in the way that they have been able to recover.”
In November, it was determined that a new structure would be installed within the County Administrative Office upon Anderson’s exit: The Office of Response, Recovery and Resilience. The department will consist of a director, two analysts and administrative aids dedicated to the three functions moving forward. Hiring for the department is live, and Anderson is working with her supervisor to ease the transition and document her knowledge so it doesn’t get phased out with the loss of her experience.
“(It’s), for me, creating the pathway for all things I know and have overseen,” she said. “Most importantly, (I’m) introducing the relationships that I have with our nongovernment agencies and volunteer groups that we rely on heavily for our response and for our community awareness and resiliency piece… ensuring that they stay engaged and have a point of contact for moving forward with the work and the talents that they bring to the county.”
Beyond providing pro-tips, Anderson is working with partnering community, government, nongovernment, health care and law enforcement entities to review what they each gathered after fighting a natural catastrophe during a health crisis.
Yesterday
After an incident large or small, the Office of Emergency Services conducts an after-action review that allows all parties to input views on what happened and what can be done to plan for future disasters. In the case of the CZU Complex fire, that means actively looking at ways to curb the possibility of debris flows in coming months.
Anderson said staff is obligated to present this report to the state as well as take information from the report to improve upon performance and identify gaps that left room for danger and need to be tackled in the long-term. In the 2017 floods, it was discovered that the county’s Public Works Department needed better radio capabilities. In the 2019 Public Safety Power Shutoffs, when PG&E turned off power during severe weather, county leaders learned the true value of using ham radio operators. In the summer fire, the coalition of agencies learned how to evacuate masses of people and activate the Emergency Operations Center all while honoring social distancing, Anderson said. This model, which incorporates using tents inside buildings for evacuees to create privacy and separation, could be recycled and reinvented if debris flow does throw a wrench in recovery plans from here on out.
“Issues come up as you have to evacuate people to a place in any kind of incident but in a pandemic, obviously, it has some very unique attributes to it,” she said. “I (created) PSAs about self-preparedness… I bet more people (pay attention) now. Same with enrolling in CodeRED (notifications), no matter how many times I have sung that song.”
With the acknowledgment that no perfect notification system exists, Anderson and her volunteer Community Emergency Response team train with partners for what she calls “the lowest common denominator.” They imagine how a situation may be if evacuees don’t receive any of their three tiers of communication — an advisory, warning and order to evacuate.
“We had our CERT teams go out and do door-to-door canvassing to each of the residences and addresses that were identified in debris flow zones, giving brochures and taking information through a survey,” she said. “That was another lesson learned, is that we need to understand how people get information and have the ability to instruct them about what is the best method.”
Anderson says that CERT team members and other agencies that assisted with response gave thousands of hours helping with animal services, regulation of the fairgrounds, shelters, registration and all other pop-up functions that had to be launched to address the needs of the community.
“They’re phenomenal community members that have stepped up, remembering we’re in a pandemic,” she said. “Many of our volunteers are in a vulnerable category in terms of age and other underlying conditions… they still stepped up.”
Tomorrow
When Anderson isn’t penning information about partnerships or reflecting on red flags that popped up during emergency response this time around, she’s studying and revising disaster preparedness plans. All plans, organized in five-year cycles, are up to date beside the hefty Emergency Management Plan. That plan is in its final draft and will be vetted this week so that it can go to the Board of Supervisors early next year so that there are instructions laid out for shelter plans in any situation.
“Every county is guilty of not going through and updating their stuff, but we as a county have taken the various incidents that we have been exposed to in the last five years — having a lot of change in personnel — to update the plans,” she said. “We have figured out a way to ensure that moving forward they’re updated regularly… and that the point of contact is a position, not a person.”
In every day
Anything an individual or family does to prepare themselves aids an entire community, Anderson said. The more they take care of themselves, the more first responders can serve to fight fires, floods and all other phenomena because people have figured out how to mobilize themselves.
Every household should have their own plan, though city and county plans are accessible. Anderson said people should ask themselves if they have a go-bag, what’s in it, if the go bag and the escape plan has been tested, who the emergency contacts outside the region are and if they know that so they can be contacted and if they are generally paying attention to weather patterns.
“If you feel like you should be leaving and the weather’s changing and you have a place to go, by all means, do not wait to be told,” she said. “In a debris flow situation, you will not have a second chance. There will be no spontaneous heroes standing and guarding, fighting a debris flow to save a structure. You can look at the files from Montecito and you can see the outcome of what happened when people did not heed warnings.”
Santa Barbara County debris flows killed 20 people who did not evacuate in January 2018 when Montecito — scarred by the Thomas Fire of 2017 — experienced mud and boulders rush down into its creeks and valleys at 20 mph, and nature thrown down from the Santa Ynez Mountains.
Santa Cruz County residents must combat their exhaustion with the energy that comes from knowing what may be ahead.
“We’re tired, right?” Anderson acknowledged. “We’re fire tired, we’re evacuation tired, we’re financially exhausted, we’re emotionally exhausted, all of it… It’s likely you’re going to have to get out two or three times, maybe two or three times nothing happens. It’s just your test. But you still need to do it; find somewhere within yourselves and your families and your support systems to encourage each other to make it happen, because life is the most important piece. We can’t replace that.”
Even if the county experiences no significant environmental damage in the coming days, it will be enduring COVID-19 for an unknown period of time. Though Anderson calls this the worst year of her life, she says that this year has humbled her. When each day brings a new coronavirus-related death, she is grateful to be alive.
“I think there has to be a silver lining or we would never come out of the bunker, but some (days) it’s hard to find one more than others,” Anderson said. “I have a place to live. I have food to eat. And at least for the next two weeks, I have a job.”
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