Blognote: This report references a 2019 Orange County grand jury report
Editors
Note: This three-day series takes a look at the ongoing risks for many Orange
County residents who are living near wildfire zones that are burning more often
with each passing year. This is the first story in the series. In the second
story, Hosam Elattar examines what the fire means for Chino Hills State Park,
with the fire burning more than 60 percent of the parkland.
Over
30,000 acres burned between the Silverado, Blue Ridge and Bond Fires, all of
which saw unique communication responses that failed to inform the public in
different ways.
In
a series of press conferences during Silverado, public officials largely
praised their own response to the blaze and their communication with the
public, despite resident complaints on social media and in community meetings
that emergency responders failed to effectively communicate evacuation
orders.
A grand jury report in 2019 documented how Orange County
emergency responders have long struggled with giving timely information to the
public, painting a response that failed to communicate clearly to the public
throughout the evacuation process.
The
grand jury made a variety of recommendations on how to improve the situation,
several of which were implemented including updates to the AlertOC notification
system.
But
similar issues to the Canyon 2 Fire still persisted this year in the county’s
fire response.
New
issues also arose with the county’s first major emergency during the
coronavirus pandemic. Evacuation centers quickly filled up, requiring a mass
expansion, and in one fire no evacuation centers were opened by the county at
all for fear of the virus’ spread.
Silverado: Interagency
Breakdowns
The
first two fires this year showed the difference between when cities stepped up
to lead versus the county’s decision making.
The
City of Irvine, the first and largest city forced to evacuate during this
year’s wildfires, focused more on communication with the public than any other
city during the wildfire: City council members were publishing updated
information on the fire ahead of or in sync with the city’s own police
department and emergency response teams, utilizing an evacuation plan drawn up
last year.
however,
the evacuation plan hadn’t been updated to reflect the COVID pandemic, and the
city quickly filled up over a dozen evacuation centers in a few hours. Voice of
OC reporters on the ground saw centers fill up in under 20 minutes, and Irvine
city staff frequently closed and reopened centers throughout the first few days
of the fire.
The
city’s leading role also saw discrepancies between evacuation advisories with
other agencies. In their live maps, the Sheriffs’ Department and Irvine had big
differences, with some residents under no evacuation order or advisory on one
map and under mandatory orders in the other.
A
similar problem cropped up in 2017, with the OC Sheriffs’ Department and the
city of Orange sending out conflicting maps within 20 minutes of each other
showing different regions of the city that needed to evacuate during the Canyon
2 Fire.
Irvine
Police Sgt. Karie Davies, the police department’s Public Information Officer,
said all the data on their maps and mandatory evacuations were issued based on
advice from the Orange County Fire Authority, and could not speak on what was
represented on the sheriffs’ maps.
But
when asked by Voice of OC reporters, OCFA’s public information office said that
all evacuation orders were under the sheriff’s control, and decisions were made
based on incoming information between OCFA and the sheriff’s department.
Carrie
Braun, Public Information Officer for the OC Sheriff’s Department, said
evacuation decisions were made at command posts as a unified decision between
the different agencies responding to the fires, including OCFA and individual
city’s police departments, and that map updates were handled by trained county
employees.
A
firefighter stands by the 133 South toll road highway entrace observing an
active fire that is happening a couple of yards away on Oct. 26, 2020.
Blue Ridge: Evacuation Center Confusions
Over
a month after the Blue Ridge Fire, it still remains unclear who was actually in
charge of setting up evacuation centers.
When
reports of a fire in the hills east of Yorba Linda first popped up it was being
called the Green Fire, and then swiftly had its name changed to the Blue Ridge
Fire, prompting some confusion among local officials as to whether or not they
were two separate fires nearby or one and the same.
The
OCFA also didn’t have any public information officers available to respond in
the early hours of the Blue Ridge Fire as they were focused on the Silverado
Fire, slowing initial efforts to find official updates on the status of what
would become the larger fire.
But
once public information officers were on site, OCFA and the Sheriff’s Department
largely handled all updates surrounding the fire. Voice of OC found no
disparities between the evacuation information being released by county
agencies and subsequent data from the cities of Lake Forest, Mission Viejo and
Yorba Linda.
However,
officials struggled more with the establishment of evacuation centers in the
Blue Ridge Fire compared to Silverado, which had a series of staffed centers up
and running swiftly and was forced to open several previously unplanned
locations.
Initially,
the Blue Ridge Fire only had one advertised evacuation center, set up at the
Thomas Lasorda Jr. Field House several hours after the first round of mandatory
evacuations were issued, leaving many residents with no set place to go after
leaving their homes.
When
asked by Voice of OC who was in charge of arranging evacuation centers, no
clear answers were offered by public agencies.
Braun
said that there is generally one trained county employee in charge of
coordinating evacuation efforts with cities if they requested it, and that
individual cities would have more knowledge on how they handled their
evacuations.
But
the city of Yorba Linda refused to answer questions about their part in the
evacuation, directing all questions about the effort back to Braun.
The
surrounding cities of Mission Viejo and Lake Forest were also forced to
evacuate small portions of the city and both contract with the OCFA and OC
Sheriffs’ Department for their public safety offices, leaving it unclear who
was responsible for setting up evacuation centers in those cities.
The 2019 grand jury report pointed out similar confusion
surrounding fire communication and evacuation procedures last year, finding
that, “Lack of coordination among the involved agencies caused Emergency Public
Information sent out about evacuations during the Canyon 2 fire to be
inconsistent, and confused residents.”
The
Orange County Fire Authority’s Board of Directors issued a short statement on
the grand jury’s finding.
“Public
safety agencies have a responsibility to coordinate messaging to ensure the
public will receive factual and concise information. That practice is challenged
by media messaging, social media posts and a wildfire that was quickly
escalating. In this case, it was a matter of life and death and the best
information at the time was sent.”
Bond: Power Down
The
worst breakdowns in communication came during the Bond Fire, which set
Silverado Canyon ablaze for the second time in two months. Before the fire
started, Southern California Edison informed customers they would be turning
off the area’s power due to a red flag fire warning in the area.
When
a house fire started just a few hours later, residents were unable to call 911,
forcing them to go in person to the fire station to report the blaze. According
to one complaint sent to the California Public Utilities Commission, residents
couldn’t get word to firefighters for half an hour, and neighbors were trying
to suppress the blaze with garden hoses.
When
evacuations started, residents did not receive notices on any of their devices
due to the power outages, and many reported having to run door to door telling
their neighbors to get out as the blaze moved forward. Officials also chose not
to open any evacuation centers due to concerns surrounding the coronavirus,
despite having opened centers for fires just weeks before.
The
issue was not unknown: multiple residents have shared letters they sent to the
commission outlining those same concerns.
“You
need to understand that when you turn the power off in Silverado – We have no
cell service therefore we could not call 911 if an emergency arose or a fire
did in fact start. When you turn the power off you are endangering the lives of
everyone in our community,” wrote Megan Dornbush, who sent an email to the
utilities commission the day before the start of the Bond Fire.
Spenser
Li, another resident of Silverado Canyon, began asking Edison questions about
the shutoffs after the Silverado Fire, and was shocked by some of the answers.
“I
told them that one day there will be a fire and no one in the canyon will know
because we can’t get 911. One of them downright told me ‘someone will knock on
your door when the fire is close by,’” Li said.
In
response to questions from Voice of OC, Edison said that residents were warned
in advance that the power would be shut off, and local authorities have
repeatedly refused to speak about power shutdowns during any of the fires.
“I
think it’s something we’re going to have to explore with them in the future,”
said OC Sheriffs’ Lt. Gary Knudsen at a community meeting with residents on
Dec. 5. “Unfortunately, they’re not here.”
After
action reports on all three fires are still ongoing, with OCFA participating in
the investigation behind Silverado and Bond while San Bernardino County handles
Blue Ridge, which started in Chino Hills.
Voice
of OC
By Noah
December 21, 2020
No comments:
Post a Comment