“Sometimes I feel like Chicken Little running around, but I need to keep people plugged in. There’s nothing like a disaster to wake people up.”
Brad Davis, the city’s Emergency Preparedness director, was speaking of his efforts to prepare local homes and businesses to survive disastrous fires and other emergencies, and how the city responded during the last two firestorms.
“Generally, people responded well in these last fires,” Davis said. “From the feedback I’ve gotten from the fire and sheriff’s departments, residents who had a plan-a telephone tree, an evacuation route-they followed protocol. Groups in Latigo Canyon and Tivoli Cove, they had worked with me and it paid off.”
The fires of October and November tested the warnings and predictions that Los Angeles County Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman has been issuing of late: Malibu has a year-round fire season and residents need to plan for it.
After the Malibu Road fire on Jan. 8, which destroyed several houses, and during the hot, dry summer months with record-breaking drought conditions, local fire departments were especially diligent about promoting brush clearance and emergency evacuation plans.
Davis and the City Council upped the number of Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training seminars and re-examined the efficacy of the local emergency notification network.
“Generally, the Sheriff’s Department uses the reverse 911 system to notify residents,” City manager Jim Thorsen said. “It worked fairly well, as far as I know. But this is just one tool in the toolbox.”
The problem with such a system is when fire burns through telephone cables, destroying the very material such a system relies upon, as what happened with Charter Communications when it lost its capacity to deliver cable, Internet and telephone services in the last fires.
“What we’re looking at now is a more comprehensive notification system,” Thorsen said. “It would include contact with all the ways people communicate now: land and cell telephone lines, e-mail, text messaging right to your Blackberry and to numbers outside of the fire area with just one click.”
During last month’s fire in Corral Canyon, Thorsen said residents seemed fairly well prepared to evacuate in a manner that didn’t hinder emergency response trucks from hurrying to the scene.
“I talked at length with the fire department and they said the single lane that you come across on Corral Canyon Road was never blocked,” Thorsen said. “This comes from having an informed public as well as a prepared public.”
Such awareness has not been easy to achieve, Davis said. “I’ve gotten a lot of requests from homeowners groups to give CERT training, but it has taken the disasters of the last year to galvanize people. It’s human nature. People don’t want to talk about something as uncomfortable as preparing for fires. So my job is to train people before apathy kicks in again and the next big disaster comes along.”
The next “big disaster” could come in the form of mudslides, should heavy winter rains hit burned-out hillsides denuded of erosion-preventing vegetation.
“Right after the fires, we had teams out assessing burn areas,” Davis said. “We worked with Caltrans and got sandbags and K-rails (concrete barriers) out along Malibu Canyon Road. There were a few run-off problems last weekend when it rained. But we had people patrolling during the night. It’s a team effort.”
Davis will be offering more CERT training seminars starting next month and residents are urged to call and register with the city.
The next seminar begins Jan. 22 and meetings take place every Tuesday and Thursday until Feb. 12. The sessions, which are free, will be held at the City Hall from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.
“We provide all the materials and graduates will get a backpack full of supplies,” Davis said.
One can never be too prepared, Davis cautioned.
“Malibu is a place where there’s always something going on,” he said. “Knowledge, awareness, supplies, CERT training … we hope we don’t have to use them, but the most important thing is to have a plan and use it. During a disaster, everyone is freaking out. So you have to plan for that as well. Sometimes, it’ll be about self-sufficiency and you can’t wait around for someone else to show up and tell you what to do.”
More information and registration for January’s CERT training can be obtained by calling Brad Davis at 310.456.2489, ext. 260 or online at the City’s Web site www.ci.malibu.ca.us.