New plan includes provisions for fires, floods, pandemics and a citywide evacuation map
For the first time, Cloverdale’s Emergency Operations Plan now includes specific information about floods and fires, as well as an evacuation map for the city.
Prior to work done by Police Chief Jason Ferguson to update Cloverdale’s plan, the document was last updated in 2007 and lacked mitigation information about emergencies that have since become more prevalent around the county.
“This was a key task that the chief took on with open arms to address and update,” said City Manager David Kelley at a city council meeting on March 10.
When looking at Cloverdale’s need to address hazard mitigation, Kelley said that updating the city’s Emergency Operations Plan was at the top of the list and that doing so will “provide appropriate planning documentation to address the emergencies (and) that it’s not a matter of ‘if,’ it’s a matter of ‘when.’”
The more comprehensive plan comes on the heels of Sonoma County having four fires and a flood over the course of four years — while in the midst of a pandemic that’s going into its second year. Incorporated Cloverdale hasn’t directly been subjected to a wildfire in recent years but has been surrounded by them — most notably, the 2017 Pocket Fire (designated as part of the Sonoma Complex Fire), which was just to the east of town and the 2019 Kincade Fire, which threatened the hills of Geyserville. A 2019 flood that did the most damage in west Sonoma County did some damage in Cloverdale as well, causing slides in both incorporated and unincorporated city and damaging the levee that separates the Cloverdale Municipal Airport from the Russian River.
As natural disasters and climate threats loom, the city is taking note by updating the emergency plan; updating the plan is part of a larger, related effort to get Cloverdale and Cloverdalians more prepared for emergencies.
“Many significant events have occurred in the city since that time, requiring a more comprehensive plan that includes the tools necessary for responding to wildfires, earthquakes, floods and a pandemic,” Ferguson said, noting that both the former and newly-updated plan follow guidelines set forth by the California Emergency Management System (EMS), the National Emergency Management System (NEMS) and the Incident Command Structure (ICS).
“This updated emergency operations plan addresses how the city will respond to extraordinary events or disasters from the preparation phase through recovery,” Ferguson said.
One of the most critical changes to the plan, he said, was the incorporation of mass care and shelter guidance from the Sonoma County Department of Emergency Management, “which addresses actions taken in response to red flag warnings, flood warnings and notices of public safety power shutoffs during the pandemic.”
Mapping it out
One of the more notable changes to the city’s Emergency Operations Plan is the addition of evacuation maps.
“Before this update, the city did not have an evacuation plan identifying zone boundaries or evacuation routes that are critical for traffic safety and emergency response,” Ferguson said, noting that he worked with Fire Chief Jason Jenkins and the county to establish evacuation zones and routes for the city.
Along with the established zones, each zone is assigned a primary and secondary evacuation route to use in case of an emergency.
“Chief Jenkins and I really sat down and thought out how best to achieve this,” Ferguson said. “Disasters evolve rapidly, and what might be our best plan to get out is all of the sudden blocked by fire, flood and we have to look at secondary routes. Even though we’ve identified these, they may not work, but at least we’ve given some kind of guide for those living in those zones on the best way to exit the city during emergencies.”
The county deals with its evacuation zones differently — when the county issues evacuations during emergencies, its codes only pertain to unincorporated areas.
Cloverdale’s evacuation zones are numbered one through six and only address areas within city limits. The county has its own established evacuation zones that follow an alphanumeric system for those living in parts of the county.
“If we come into a situation where we have to evacuate, we utilize our own system on how we evacuate,” Ferguson said, adding that the county has Cloverdale’s evacuation zones on file, but that in the event that parts of Cloverdale-proper will have to evacuate, people will hear from the city rather than the county.
“This has been a long time in the process — these zones are clearly established and the plan is to get these maps out to the public as quickly as we can to be in preparation for the season,” he said.
Mayor Jason Turner asked what happens to the evacuation routes, all of which lead to Highway 101, if the highway is shut down.
“We all know here that we really are limited in our capacity without that highway, but there’s certainly the question of a major earthquake disrupting that process. What would happen in that circumstance … the point of Nixle and the reverse 911 is to give those directions in the event that 101 is disrupted,”
“You cannot get every single exit and every single route to everybody — it would be a major problem,” he said, which is why the city is only putting out primary and secondary evacuation routes.
Improving the emergency operations center
Various additions to the Emergency Operations Plan were made to help improve the inner workings of Cloverdale’s emergency operations center, which serves as the response hub during local emergencies.
The new plan includes some bread-and-butter information that was missing from the former plan, like phone numbers, to help the people who may be running Cloverdale’s emergency operations center.
“I will speak from experience — when I first came here the Kincade Fire was shortly after I started here — and it was a very difficult process for me because I didn’t know a lot of the contact names and the contact phone numbers,” he said.
“This emergency plan also provides guidance through a means of checklists for each position in the event that somebody who’s working the emergency operations center is unfamiliar with the process or the control measures,” Ferguson said. “The benefit of this program is you can be operations, planning, logistics, finance — whether or not you’re 100% confident in what that role is, there’s a checklist that you can go through and line-by-line check off.”
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