Laguna Beach town hall focuses on wildland fire and emergency preparedness
Laguna Beach city officials held a meeting to inform the public on the threat of wildland fire and best practices for emergency preparedness last week.
Mayor Bob Whalen called for the meeting, which took place Sept. 19, after residents raised questions about the community’s readiness to handle a wildfire following the tragic fire events in Hawaii.
“A lot of the parallels between Maui and here are striking,” Whalen said at the start of the meeting. “The high winds, the dry grasses, the limited ingress and egress, the older community. We’ve got a lot of factors that are similar, so they were fair questions from the community.”
The 30th anniversary of the catastrophic Laguna Beach fire of 1993 will fall on Oct. 27. Longtime residents remember well the devastation of the flames that burned 16,000 acres and destroyed more than 400 homes.
Fire Chief Niko King led off a presentation. He cited fuel, weather and topography as key components of a wildfire.
“The weather is what we love so much here in Laguna Beach, and so is the topography,” King said. “There’s a lot of homes that have great coastal views. It adds a lot of character to our community, but those are the two components that add to the threat of wildland fire that cannot be modified.”
Last week’s panel also included Public Works Director Mark McAvoy, Emergency Operations Coordinator Brendan Manning, Police Chief Jeff Calvert, Marine Safety Chief Kevin Snow, Deputy Fire Chief Crissy Teichmann, and Fire Marshal Robert Montaghami.
Those who attended or tuned into the town hall were presented with an emergency response scenario under red-flag conditions. Officials said that when such a situation arises, there are parking restrictions in the Diamond-Crestview neighborhood.
Roadway limitations in and out of the city have public safety personnel preaching prompt evacuation when there is an immediate threat to life or property.
“Just to put it into perspective, most of the destruction and devastation that occurred in Maui and Paradise [California] took less than four hours,” Calvert said. “Under normal roadway conditions in our city, it’s going to take four hours and 20 minutes to evacuate our entire community.
“If you shut down the 133, you add an additional 40 minutes to that. If … Laguna Canyon Road and [either] North or South Coast Highway are shut down, you can add three hours and 45 minutes.”
Manning spoke to the importance of staying informed via communication platforms such as Nixle, AlertOC and social media. He also highlighted the addition of the emergency outdoor warning system, which was used to notify impacted residents during the recent Emerald fire.
The speakers allow city officials to communicate instructions to residents, rather than simply emitting a tone in the event of an emergency.
In addition, Manning said that the city has trained over 350 people in its community emergency response team (CERT) program. Some of those volunteers were placed strategically throughout town to gauge whether the emergency outdoor warning system was audible when it was rolled out.
“We had CERT volunteers that actually moved out, the radius moved out, and they took notes on where they could hear it, so we actually have radius maps for each of the speakers,” Calvert added. “There are gaps in the city. The speakers don’t cover every area of the city because of lack of electricity. That’s been a hindrance for us, but we’re looking for those gaps to fill. That’s why we’re continually doing the tests, and we appreciate the feedback from the community when they do not hear the alerting system.”
Undergrounding power lines is a major community focus for mitigating fire risk. A Caltrans project is bringing about improvements to Laguna Canyon Road by installing a second continuous outbound lane. It will also see the removal of a dozen utility poles and more than 3,000 feet of overhead utility lines.
Firefighting capabilities have received a boost from mutual aid agreements with nearby agencies, wildland cameras for early detection and the addition of two helicopter refilling stations. Teichmann said the filling stations are located at Top of the World and Zitnik Reservoir.
Fire personnel are also available to conduct property inspections to see if it meets the defensible space standards with respect to vegetation and home hardening.
A video of the preparedness meeting can be found online at lagunabeachcity.net/meetings.
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