Santa Barbara Grand jury report: New EOC Needed

By Sam Womack/Staff Writer


The emergency operations center for Santa Barbara County is housed in an inadequate, modular building that would fall apart at the first sign of a major earthquake, according to a report released Wednesday by the grand jury.

This is the second grand jury report since 2006 that identified a new emergency operations center (EOC) as a high priority, and urged that funds be allocated to the project.

“The county of Santa Barbara has waited too long to set up a dedicated EOC,” the report concluded. “The only backup considered by the county appears to be tents.”

The EOC coordinates response and recovery actions and resources, by facilitating incident decisions in an emergency, according to the grand jury, which is a volunteer, investigatory body.

When an emergency occurs, as was seen last year in the Gap and Tea fires on the South Coast, it takes at least two to three hours to set up an operating communications and information center in the 3,670-square-foot modular building.

The grand jury did express high praise for the departmental coordination during the fires, once the center was online.

The buildings converted into an EOC in an emergency situation are in a parking lot on Camino Del Remedio in Santa Barbara, and are generally used as a county training site.

In 2007, the Santa Ynez Airport, the Betteravia Government Center in Santa Maria and a new site north of Cathedral Oaks Road in Santa Barbara were explored as possible sites of an EOC, the report stated.

The Board of Supervisors directed staff to begin moving forward on an estimated $6.7 million, 9,300-square-foot building at the Cathedral Oaks Road location, but the county’s budgetary problems halted the progress of the project in early 2009.

One of the unanswered questions posed by the jury is why nearly three times the current amount space is needed.

Construction on a new EOC has been put on hold, and it would take 18 months to three years to have a finished project, the grand jury said.

So far, “inadequate efforts” have been made to find a short-term site, the report stated.

Taking the initiative, the grand jury followed Federal Emergency Management Agency guidelines, and found at least one interim site that could be used temporarily — the basement of the administration building.

The grand jury recommended that the county continue pursuing the purchase of a $68,000 virtual EOC software system that would not require a physical center. The jury also urged county leaders to visit the emergency operations centers that are up and running in Ventura and San Luis Obispo counties.

In the case of Santa Barbara County, it is assumed that another fire will break out and a major earthquake will hit, said the grand jury, and having a dedicated EOC is critical.


http://www.santamariatimes.com/articles/2009/04/30/news/centralcoast/news08.txt