Ready to go — Mill Creek residents have already taken the emergency preparedness step of creating a clearly marked alternate evacuation route for residents. Mill Creek Road is a one-way in, one-way out, eight mile road.
Emergency preparedness webinar reiterates importance of home hardening, go-bags
Experts from CalFire, the Healdsburg Fire Department, Healdsburg District Hospital and the city of Healdsburg met virtually on July 31 to discuss disaster preparedness topics such as home hardening, vegetation management, emergency alert systems and electric utility hardening and to answer resident’s burning questions about how to prepare for an emergency amid COVID-19.
The event, which was hosted by the Healdsburg Chamber of Commerce, was held in response to a survey on emergency preparedness the chamber sent to residents and businesses earlier in the month to gauge what preparedness topics and questions locals were most interested and concerned about.
The vital role of home hardening and brush management
Ben Nicholls, the division chief for the CalFire Sonoma-Lake-Napa unit, discussed how lessons learned from the 2017 Sonoma County fires and from the Kincade Fire contributed to better home hardening and vegetation management. He also stressed the importance of defensible space.
He pointed out that as we head into the thick of fire season, it’s important to remain vigilant when it comes to wildfire.
“Our county has experienced major fires for the last five-plus years and it seems like if you don’t like a record you wait six months and there will be a new record for another fire,” Nicholls said. “The thing that I want to leave with the crowd today, is that 99% of our fires are human-caused and at the end of the day, lightning is the one natural cause for a wildland fire, so if we all do our part and we’re all vigilant, 99% of the fires that we experience can be prevented.”
Nicholls said once a fire is ignited, structure loss and loss of life often go hand-in-hand, which is why creating defensible space and home hardening is so important. He said more fire preparation means more of a successful outcome.
“I was looking at some of the photos of structures that survived around Windsor as the fire came in last year and it was just simple little things up against a deck that had caught fire and luckily there was a fire engine close when that fire started, but I can’t stress enough taking the time to get the dead material away from your house and to get those fuels up off the ground and to create separation amongst the canopies of the trees around the house,” Nicholls said. “That will be the difference between whether your home is saved or destroyed by the fire.”
CalFire recommends creating at least 100 feet of defensible space around your home from any surrounding grass, trees or shrubs. It’s also a good idea to have a 30-foot buffer zone from buildings, structures and decks.
“Defensible space gives us another leg up on the fire, but home hardening, as we’ve experienced in these fire events, is critical in preventing the ignition potential from those embers from falling onto a home,” Nicholls explained.
According to CalFire, embers from a wildfire can destroy homes up to miles away if the embers land on roof shingles, dried pine needles, or other flammable materials and ignite.
Home hardening solutions include opting for a composition roof instead of a wood shingle roof, covering all vents with a metal mesh, installing dual-paned windows that can better withstand heat, building decks with ignition resistant or other approved materials, and making sure rain gutters are clear of any debris.
In terms of vegetation management, CalFire suggests removing all tree branches at least six feet from the ground, trimming brush, grass and shrubs away from the home, spacing shrubs and trees apart 10 to 30 feet, and utilizing fire-resistant landscaping such as flower beds with mulch and hardier plants like french lavender and sage.
“We’re engaging in far more aggressive vegetation projects out there … Just like homeowners preparing their home prior to that fire, if we prepare the landscape for that fire event that we know is coming — it’s not a matter of if, but when — then we can have a less intense firefight and ultimately have a more successful outcome,” Nicholls said.
He added that CalFire Sonoma-Lake-Napa is working with Healdsburg Fire Chief Jason Boaz, and surrounding neighbors, to create a fuel break from Alexander Valley Road down to the Rio Lindo center and Bailhache to act as a buffer for future fire events. Healdsburg Fire has also worked on road maintenance and vegetation management around Fitch Mountain to be better prepared for fire.
Emergency alert systems and evacuation
Boaz and Nicholls said in terms of evacuation, you will know your neighborhood best and it’s good to have an evacuation route in mind and a plan for two different evacuation routes and to identify the items that you are going to take in a go-bag.
“There are a lot of folks who want to be told which way to go, but during the early phases of a rapidly expanding wildland fire the situation is extremely dynamic, so we ask the general public to make sure they establish two ways out prior to that fire event,” Nicholls said.
Regarding evacuation alerts and emergency notification, Boaz said since the 2017 fires, the county has done a lot to up the ante on alerts. The county uses SoCo Alerts and individual jurisdictions and towns, like Healdsburg, often use Nixle. There’s also use of high-low sirens, however, the city of Healdsburg doesn’t currently use that method of notification.
Boaz encouraged folks to sign up for both Nixle and SoCo and added that having a NOAA weather radio can be helpful in an emergency situation as well.
“There is no one silver bullet, there is no one way we are going to be able to alert everybody, so our approach now is to send alerts on every platform available to us,” Boaz said.
Emergency prep amid COVID
Much of the chamber’s survey response and questions focused on how Healdsburg District Hospital is handling COVID-19 and what they are doing to prepare for wildfire and power outages from public safety power shutoffs.
Brian Seekins, plant operator for the Healdsburg District Hospital, and emergency room director, Dr. Bruce Deas, were on hand to discuss the above topics.
“For the question, ‘Do we have enough PPE (personal protection equipment) to keep us and patients safe?’ The answer is ‘Yes’ for now. The longer answer is that we did institute an extended use procedure for our PPE for our staff,” Seekins said. “We’ve taken direction from some of our government agencies such as the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention, at the federal level and at the state level and the Sonoma County Department of Public Health. We’ve sought guidance and we instituted procedures in place for our staff to extend that use, but things are a little challenging to get as the entire nation is seeking the same cache of materials to keep everybody safe.”
Seekins said the hospital feels prepared and confident in the process of managing the health of folks in an emergency situation. According to Seekins and Deas, the hospital has an emergency generator if power is lost and they can bring in gas if needed.
Deas advised folks to add some additional essential items to an emergency preparedness go bag in order to prepare for dealing with an evacuation during COVID. He suggested adding items such as a 30-day supply of your prescription, proof of residency, copies of your medical record and physician contact information as well as gloves, masks, cleaning solutions such as Clorox wipes, and hand sanitizer.
“There’s three groups of things, first aid items, important documents and then COVID-19 items which are sort of new additions,” Deas said, noting that valved masks do not prevent the spread of infection because the valve allows secretions to flow out. He said if you happen to be in an evacuation shelter you may want an N95 mask because it offers the most protection in terms of filtering out airborne particles. Surgical masks and multilayered cloth masks are the next best thing.
Utility hardening
Lastly, city of Healdsburg electric department superintendent, Todd Woolman, touched on the measures the department is implementing to strengthen and harden their electrical lines.
While the city’s gas lines are provided by PG&E, the city has its own electric department.
In an effort to make the city’s electric infrastructure more resilient, the department has identified hazardous trees in the area that could impact lines and conducted extensive tree limb removal work.
Woolman said they also rebuilt the entire line on the Healdsburg Fitch Mountain side with steel reinforced conductors. They also frequently perform infrared patrols to identify weak spots in infrastructure.
To view the online webinar, visit: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=330164328168832. To learn about home hardening techniques, visit: https://www.readyforwildfire.org/.
