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.
Read more at https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/sonoma-county-grand-jury-emergency-evacuations/