emergency warning – Enviro Updates

Emma Murphy, PRESS DEMOCRAT

The report comes weeks after local fire officials warned the region is likely to experience a long peak fire season.

Despite years of work and extensive investments to bolster its disaster planning and response, Sonoma County remains ill-prepared for emergency evacuations in the event of another regional firestorm, flood or other major disaster, the county’s civil grand jury has concluded in a new report.

The stinging assessment comes even after the strides the county, local cities and grassroots groups have taken after the 2017 firestorm and subsequent disasters to improve planning for the type of large emergencies that can displace thousands of people at a time.

The tools and protocols now in place, the grand jury found, function only as a foundation for evacuation plans — and those plans, covering much of the region, lack the detailed, proactive steps to ensure they can work, especially along the county’s sprawling rural road network, the new report says.

The panel faulted the county for its lack of modern modeling technology to evaluate evacuation routes and plan around known traffic choke points. The county also depends too heavily on cellphone networks and the internet to communicate alerts — an unreliable method for rural residents, according to the 20-page report.

“Without accelerated investment in planning, communications, and road improvements — and full compliance with California’s legal standards — the risk of chaotic, life-threatening evacuations remains high,” the report states.

Austin Murphy, PRESS DEMOCRAT

The short-staffed California Nevada River Forecast Center, a small Sacramento field office of the National Weather Service, has outsized importance to North Bay residents. Its operations are imperiled by downsizing and proposed cuts.

The closer you live to the Russian River, the likelier it is you’ve spent time on this no-frills website, whose wavy, colored lines alert users when the river is approaching flood levels, and when it will recede.

The site is maintained by the California Nevada River Forecast Center, or CNRFC, under the umbrella of the National Weather Service. It’s one of 13 forecast centers preparing “timely river and flood forecasts” for some 4,000 river locations across the nation.

The California Nevada forecast center is a small field office, based in Sacramento. But its work has outsized importance to North Bay residents.

The data it collects during heavy rains helps emergency service officials figure out who needs to be evacuated as the region’s largest rivers rise, none packing a more destructive, dangerous punch than the Russian.

The CNRFC also provides information vital to Sonoma Water, the Army Corps of Engineers and other agencies, as they make decisions on when to release water from reservoirs, and how much.

But now, in the face of cuts and attrition engineered by the Trump administration, that office is operating with a little over two-thirds of its usual workforce. Under Trump, staff shortages have become endemic in offices throughout the National Weather Service.

Environmental Center of Sonoma County

Tag: emergency warning

Sonoma County emergency preparedness falls short, grand jury says, warning of ‘chaotic, life-threatening’ evacuations

Staffing cuts to National Weather Service river forecast center could leave Sonoma, Napa counties ‘flying blind’ ahead of storms