Ready for a disaster?

Whether it’s another wildfire bearing down on local communities or a snowstorm that buries houses and isolates residents from outside help, Trinity County officials are hoping that an extensive emergency planning effort over the past year will help local agencies and first responders be better prepared to handle the next disaster.

A draft Trinity County Emergency Operations Plan has been prepared by the county’s disaster council and the sheriff’s Office of Emergency Services to bring the county into compliance with state and federal emergency management standards.

It has yet to be adopted by the Trinity County Board of Supervisors, but the board spent the better part of a day in a recent workshop combing through the 200-page draft likely slated for an adoption hearing in March.

Since he became the county’s undersheriff three years ago, Eric Palmer said it has been one of his biggest goals to revamp the existing emergency operations plan “that was pretty much junk — an outdated copy of what other counties have.”

He thanked the county’s volunteer deputy director of emergency services, Larry Masterman, for his expertise in the field of emergency response and dedication to the current project as well as the disaster council’s efforts over the past year to discuss and flesh out each section of the required plan.

“This is the playbook and its biggest value is not in the plan itself, but in the development process that involved everybody all at one table,” said Masterman.

The draft plan’s intended purpose is to ensure the most effective and economical allocation of resources for the protection of people and property during a time of emergency, he said.

It establishes an emergency organization, assigns tasks and defines specific policies and procedures intended to help coordinate efforts by the various agencies responding to a disaster, all in accordance with the California Standardized Emergency Management System and the National Incident Management System that came into being after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The draft plan includes a hazards analysis specific to Trinity County, identifying the potential threats here and assigning a matrix based on the probability of something occurring and responses that would be required.

Among the most likely threats are wildfire, severe storms, flooding, landslides and transportation events that might involve hazardous materials. Less likely, but potentially more catastrophic, would be a dam failure.

In his presentation to the Board of Supervisors, Masterman said Trinity County isn’t likely to be the epicenter of a major earthquake, but it could be inundated by refugees fleeing such an event on the coast or even a volcanic eruption of Mount Shasta or Mount Lassen that could coat the county with ash for a long time.

Furthermore, just because Trinity County is rural doesn’t make it immune from terrorism, he said.

“I was paid to think like a terrorist for a long time and if you are training to do something, there’s an advantage to setting up where there is not a high level of law enforcement. If you believe being in a rural area is protection against some form of terrorism, you are ill-informed,” Masterman said.

CHAIN OF COMMAND

The draft county plan details the chain of command in a disaster and lines of succession if certain authorities are unavailable or out of the county when a situation occurs. It also provides for an alternate county seat elsewhere in the county or out of the county depending on the circumstances.

Palmer noted that when the smoke was so bad during the fires of 2008, he did think of temporarily moving the county seat from Weaverville to Shasta County and those discussions occurred.

The draft also includes a section on how to deal with evacuations and specifically how to assist people with special needs.

Masterman said the final draft will include an animal rescue and evacuation plan since past experience has shown that many people refuse to evacuate without their animals and there needs to be a depth of options identified in case the most obvious ones aren’t available.

“You would think of housing animals at the fairgrounds, but that wasn’t an option when the fire camp was there. And some people never move their animals so their horse trailers either aren’t available or don’t work. The animal issues are huge,” he said.

Palmer said the county’s animal control officer, Christine Edwards, has a wealth of knowledge about who has trailers and corral space available here to help with animal evacuations “but it’s all in her head and we need to get that written down.”

Masterman said the plan also includes a section on supervising “spontaneous volunteers — some are treasures and some are criminal so they need a lot of supervision. We have to provide safety equipment and make sure they are using safe practices because some really fascinating characters come out of the woodwork in a disaster.”

He added that if disaster impacts are being felt nationwide or statewide, “we don’t have a robust capacity here so people do need to be self-sufficient.”

For how long would depend on the situation, but Masterman said even if the state or federal governments have resources available to send, it could still be three to five days before help arrives.

The more people are prepared to take care of themselves, the better off everyone will be, he said, adding that as a veteran of several disasters including the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, “I always have six days’ worth of survival gear in my car, shoes by the bed, flashlights ready. If you are ready for one thing, you are ready for any.”

Once a final plan is adopted, a public version will be available online and in local libraries, though confidential information, including individuals’ telephone numbers, will be removed.

The county’s disaster council, required to meet twice a year, has met monthly in the process of developing the draft plan.

The group was chaired by Sup. Wendy Reiss and included representatives from the California Office of Emergency Management, Trinity County Office of Education, Trinity County Environmental and Public Health Services, Trinity Public Utilities District, Trinity County Life Support, Cal Fire and the county Sheriff’s Department.