Board of Supervisors — 2017-12-12

Where's Janet? I saw her but yeah.

Good morning and welcome to the December 12, 2017 meeting of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors here in the Santa Maria hearing room. And Mr. Allen would you call the roll please?

Mr. Adam? Here. Mr. Lavinino? Here Mr. Williams? Here Ms. Wolfe? Here Ms. Hartman?

Ready begin

May

I have a motion to approve the minutes of December 5th, 2017?

A second? All those in favor say aye. Aye, any opposed? The minutes stand approved. We have a CEO's report today Ms. Miyasato.

Supervisors part of my CEO report really has to do with what we agendized late and that was the continuation of our proclamation of emergency. We declared a proclamation of emergency for the Thomas fires and we've asked our departments to give a presentation. Some are here in the room and some are in Santa Barbara, and if I could ask the board if we could get that item first off of your departmental agenda so our public safety personnel can get back to work.

Okay Mr. Allen would you read D4 into the record please?

Chair Hartman and members of the board, item four is from the County Executive Office. It's a hearing to consider recommendations regarding an update in proclamation ratification for the Thomas Fire Emergency. We're going to go Santa Maria or Chief Peterson? Santa Barbara.

Well, good morning everybody. Chair Hartman, board members. I have a quick situation report for you but before I do that one of the sort of themes of this fire so far has been there's been a lot of discussion about the level of cooperation and collaboration that exists in our county. I think we've been successful in institutionalizing that here in our county.

Now in the spirit of that, I'm joined today by my counterpart in San Luis Obispo. San Luis Obispo Unit Chief Scotty Jalbert is behind me. He's my direct contact to CAL FIRE and an important partner even in non-emergency situations. And we're also lucky to have Unified IC Rocky Opliger from Team 4 has joined us. And when I get done with some brief remarks, These two partners are going to give you a brief overview of the strategic view of the fire.

So just a quick update on acreage if we could have that first slide up I'm not sure where we are, we can't see it from here Fire information slide. We're up to 234,000 acres just over that 20% containment we've spent almost 50 million dollars on this fire so far and discussing this with Rocky this morning the projected number is somewhere around 120 million dollars potentially even more than that and now I'm on the next slide Which shows the number of personnel. We're up to almost 7,000 men and women who are at this very moment putting themselves at risk trying to put this fire out. I'm not sure if that number includes our Sheriff's Department law enforcement but I wanted to make sure I mentioned that the Sheriff's Department or Santa Barbara County Sheriff's department is doing an amazing job on this fire under very difficult conditions.

There are over 900 fire engines, 67 bulldozers, 33 helicopters and 125 hand crews. Virtually a small army of people from all over the country here helping us with this fire. Now if you could put up the fire progression map. I just wanted to put a couple of things into perspective here on this fire. If you look at the dark green area there on the bottom, that was on the 5th, that's the first night of this fire. It went 63,000 acres in one day and then if you look at the red area over there over to the west when that occurred on the 10th That is the night that the fire made the big run and got extremely close to our county, where of course it's in our county now. That was a 61,000 acre run so to put this into perspective, the Sherpa Fire was 7500 acres as difficult as that was in 2016.

Earlier in the year our Whittier Fire was 18,500 acres and the Alamo Fire was 29,000 acres. If you think about it, just one of these runs on this fire is more than the Sherpa, the Whittier and the Alamo Fire all put together. We are truly in unprecedented historic territory with this fire. Another interesting fact I heard yesterday from the fire behavior analyst on our fire The Zaka fire took two months to reach the same size that our fire has reached in one week, which is just amazing how fast this thing has moved.

So I'm going to give this now to Scotty Jalbert, Unit Chief from San Luis Obispo. Thank you very much.

Well, good morning. As Chief Peterson said my name is Scott Jalbert and I serve as the agency administrator one of the many agency administrators for this incident and I'm representing Cal Fire. From the very start we knew that this fire was going to be a major fire and we were gonna have lots of issues with that involving multiple agencies so with that one of the priorities that we made sure that we took care of was that we have a collaborative Effort amongst all the agencies involved.

That has led us to making sure that both counties are closely in tie with each other. We are in unified command with the US Forest Service, Cal Fire, York County, Ventura County and all the law enforcement agencies and all the cities both fire and law enforcement side of the house. It's an integrated effort and as we've seen in large scale disasters throughout the nation, making sure that we're all on the same page is very important.

We've done so by integrating two incident management teams, one from Cal Fire and one from the federal side from the California Interagency Incident Management Team which is Rocky's team. We have both teams working close together as this fire is not just touching the front country of Santa Barbara and a lot of areas in Ventura, but also the Las Padres National Forest.

We're working extremely well, and I just want to reassure your board and your citizens that all agencies involved on the federal side, state side, and local government side. We're all working extremely well. We're in tight-knit communications. We are working very well with both emergency operation centers of both counties. And daily, all the fire chiefs involved meet daily to make sure that if to resolve any issues and make sure we're on the same page with the overall strategy.

And discuss some of the tactics that impact the local citizens. So with that, I'd just like to close by saying that we're doing everything that we can. We're being very successful in this march of being collaborative and I just want to appreciate our say thank you very much for all your support. I'll turn it over to Chief Upner.

Thank you, Chief. Again my name is Rocky Oplager I'm one of the Unified Command Incident Commanders on the combined team of both CAL FIRE Team 4 and then California National Team 4 and I had the honor and pleasure last year on the Sherpa Fire to brief you and then I was also one of the incident commanders in 2007 on the Zaka. Can't understate the conditions that we face right now in the local area. Unprecedented fire behavior. We have Humidities, I think this morning at 7 o'clock Montecito we were at 1%.

And since the 8th of December, it's been single digits. We've had unprecedented Santa Ana winds which are typical this time of year but we've had no moisture for almost 250 days in the area and then we also face the conditions that we see no predicted rain in the future. So taking a look at that on our highest priority as we always emphasize of all the agencies working together is public and firefighter and emergency worker safety. And so the incredible impact that we do to the communities of the folks that we have evacuated, it's a key essential component of what law enforcement does for us. To initiate that and support that operation but more importantly, this is certainly right now affected in Santa Barbara County. To adhere to those evacuations would allow the firefighters and emergency workers to do their job.

Currently as we take a look what's happening with the weather, today you woke up with smoke. As we're now battling kind of the northeast winds are not as strong so it's more of your daily winds where the cold air settles and so the smoke settles in Santa Barbara in the morning We're going to get the typical onshore or southwest in the afternoon. So we're going to get what we had yesterday, a clearing which will benefit us to use the aviation assets as Chief had said before. We have 33 helicopters that are assigned and we have two of the very large air tankers along with six other large air tankers. That will be sorting the operation and then most importantly, in support of that we're able to establish a portable retardant tank that will be right there at the bottom of the 154.

And another support camp that's going on Lake Kachuma for all the resources that are assigned to the Santa Barbara zone. And while our focus will always be that life property, we also have to remember that we have fire now pretty significantly in the Los Padres National Forest. And the impact of that is the key watershed. So we have resources that are working diligently, certainly as the fire has backed into Santa Ynez Valley. The focus to minimize that impact so we don't have sediment damage that impacts the water to Montecito, Summerlin, Santa Barbara. I'm And as we're the command structure, it's that everyday operation of those folks that are impacted during the holiday season. Certainly their families and friends at home but their dedication to the commitment of really a unified front in prioritizing and doing our most efficient level to suppress that fire.

So we have a long term strategy not only with what we're dealing today as the fire continues Burn to the west, they had really good activity last night and progress last night to try to hold that in Toro Canyon. To continue that from spreading to the west but we also have contingencies if we get increased winds of how we're going to suppress that to minimize any impact to the fire backing down into the urban interface of Santa Barbara. Thank you very much.

Chair Harmon, that's the end of our presentation for the fire side of this PowerPoint. I think Sheriff Brown is up next.

Thank you, Chief Peterson. Let me ask if any board members have questions of you in Santa Barbara before we turn to Sheriff Brown? Are there any questions on the board? Supervisor Adam?

Yeah, I was just wondering if there was any injuries to any of the safety personnel?

Yeah, amazingly we've had really no lost time injuries. We've had two minor burns that have been treated. We had one broken leg but with the amount of people and the amount of country and how difficult that is it's absolutely amazing of the safety record to this day.

It really is because especially as fast as I think move that would be easy to get some guys trapped in someplace they couldn't get out of so congratulations.

Supervisor Williams?

Well, I'm just going to ask what most people at home are probably wondering is just can you give us the latest viewpoint on where in Toro Canyon the fire is or at least when and the last reports that you have.

Right now, anybody that was in the South County saw some significant fire activity in the Romero Canyon kind of on the end of Toro Canyon up there. And what that was is there's a drainage up there it's the Romero Canyon drainage and it's a big saddle between those two peaks up in there That was burning off. So right now on the area that you can see in the front country, the fire is hung up right up above the Romero Canyon and it's kind of working its way towards if you draw a straight line up from San Ysidro Road, it's working its way back up in that area.

Supervisor Wolf?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to extend appreciation to the three of you who are standing there and all of those that are out on the fire lines right now that we don't see. It's just an incredible I mean, you hear this all the time. The cooperation that we have in our county is just tremendous and Rocky, I thought I saw you at the Gap Fire but I guess we'd go back to Zaka Fire.

And it's nice to see you and Scott, it's nice to meet you and nice to have you here as well. Also I think this is one of the first fires that we've had between counties working with Ventura County and Santa Barbara County so that's been interesting to watch again the cooperation in the manpower and woman power that's going on behind this and also just finally The science, the behavioral scientists that have come to speak to our community meetings about wind shifts, soils.

And I think the back burns that we saw last night was a result of some of that science going into effect. I think people in the front country seeing those flames it was disheartening but then there was a lot On air discussion about why that was the case, and I think we're all kind of holding our fingers. But one thing that remains a constant for me is my confidence in all of you and my appreciation. And I really believe I speak for this community when I say that. We are extremely grateful. Thank you Madam Chair.

Thank you. Seeing no more lights up here turning to Sheriff Brown

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the board. I'm Sheriff Bill Brown. I am pleased to be here to give you a summary of the evacuation situation. I don't know if we can get the map pulled up in the PowerPoint presentation but it will show you basically an overlay of our evacuation area which extends from...I think it's the next slide There it extends from Mission Canyon eastward to the county line and the southern area of the evacuation area is Highway 192. So if you essentially follow 192 to Mission Canyon, everything that's east and north in those areas has been placed into a mandatory evacuation area.

The areas below Highway 192 up to Mission Canyon and the areas west of Mission Canyon to Highway 154 have been placed in a warning situation at this point. And I just want to commend the members of the sheriff's office, the Ventura County Sheriff's Office who assisted us. Search and rescue teams from both of our agencies and once this area was evacuated and secured we have the California Highway Patrol who is providing a lot of perimeter security in addition to our staff as well. And then we have roving patrols for security in that evacuation area.

As you may have heard yesterday, we had thanks to the sharp eyes of a firefighter they noticed somebody going into a garage and stealing a bicycle from one of our residents. And as my undersheriff so aptly put it yesterday at the town hall meeting that person was ultimately arrested and evacuated to the county jail. The next slide shows you our zone system that we have and this is something we're very proud of. This was developed here within Santa Barbara County following the Hesa Cedar fire, and basically what it does is we take the county and slice it up into these zones which are pre-designated and with which we have Points that we know we have to block roads to keep these areas evacuated. And as we look at the fire and the progression of work with the Fire Incident Command, we determine which zones are due to be evacuated, which ones are likely on deck if we're going to be evacuating any more and so forth.

And I would just like to take the opportunity Throw out a kudu because retired Sheriff Sergeant Tom Walton, who is in the room and is your extra help deputy who's assigned to provide security here. He was instrumental in developing this system and worked very long and very hard in putting this together. And the last thing I would just say to all of you is just to reiterate what is said in terms of the level of cooperation. We're here obviously in a support role for the fire agencies, but we are embedded with them in the incident command. We have a strong presence obviously in the EOC and we are continuing to provide security in the areas that have been evacuated and we've had at times up to 100 or so personnel that involved in the incident.

And we're shuffling between our regular duties on what we have to do and elsewhere in the county, in terms of law enforcement and corrections and coroner and all the other duties that we have in the organization. But I'm extremely proud of the effort that's been put forth by the men and women at the sheriff's office. Thank you.

Any questions for Sheriff Brown, Supervisor Wolk? Thank

you. Excuse me, can I just add one thing that I forgot to add and that is our air support unit excuse me is obviously involved in this as well we have one firefighting helicopter that is embedded with the air crew that are working on this fire we just rotated that out when it'll come in for maintenance and another helicopter will be going in The other helicopters are available for anything that could occur elsewhere in our county during the time that we're fighting this fire.

Supervisor Wolfe. Thank you, Madam Chair and thank you Sheriff Brown and I see under Sheriff Malekian behind you. I do have a couple of comments. First of all also a lot of appreciation going out to your troops for getting people out and evacuated. You know, I think we had our last discussion after what happened in Santa Rosa and Sonoma. We know how important it is to get those messages out to our community.

And maybe this is more of a question for Rob Lewin but we did use the alert system. There were a couple of hiccups in that but I think in the end it worked to alert the community to get out and I've talked to staff about Why we had those errors, and I know that they're working on it. But I think the bottom line is and the effect of it is that we got people, you guys, your entire team and folks in the EOC got folks out. And I think that's really when you look at what could have happened, that was incredibly important.

I also talked to Under Sheriff Malakian. About the verbiage, can you just put that back up? That's being used and making sure that it's accurate. And I think your team has gone over this but under the voluntary evacuation warning there had been an error where it says above north of highway 192 there was some miscommunication. Sometimes these mistakes happen, but they were corrected immediately once they were brought to everyone's attention. And so I would just ask what is your protocol for ensuring that these messages kind of go through some steps?

If someone is writing something like this up who will review it? What is the checking? The to make sure that what goes out to the public is accurate.

Excuse me, Supervisor Wolf through the chair it's a multi step process obviously if an evacuation is determined Is going to happen as a result of the incident command and comes through that direction. That comes from the IC to our contingent that would be in the EOC. We'd be looking at the maps and determining what zones were going to be evacuated, and what the boundaries would be. We would come to an agreement with that. We would then take that information and write it up. It would then go to the JIC, and then would get disseminated publicly via the website, via press releases, via a variety of social media.

Outlets as well and the glitch that you referred to. If you can back up to the zone slide again, I can tell you basically what happened is we were looking at evacuating A particular zone, and there was some discussion as to whether it was going to be one or the other. And the boundaries on the one zone that was not evacuated inadvertently got put onto the message. And that, as you say, it was determined fairly quickly and it was corrected but it did cause some confusion and we apologize for that obviously. And unfortunately, there's a lot going on. There's a lot of plates spinning in the EOC and some mistakes will happen but obviously we're working to try to minimize that. So we're very sensitive to it right now. We're double checking that information as it comes in and will be going out.

Okay, thank you. We'll do everything we can do to ensure its accuracy.

Thank you and I'm glad we're double checking that information. And also just on a positive note, the mapping system, the interactive map that was shown by Chief Peterson has been an incredible improvement. I think that Mona you may know when that went up because I think Terry was working on that with Gina. But it was in the middle of this fire and it made an incredible difference. I heard from a lot of people that, and I feel this way, that we finally have a map where we can see the streets. People can go in and put in their address to get the information that they need so that's been a tremendous help.

And it's really important in our communities because we're not laid out on a grid system in our streets. A lot of the streets are kind of like spaghetti at the end and it's very difficult, and that interactive map has the ability for someone to go onto our county website and plug-in their address and it will let you know if you're in an evacuation area or warning area. And a lot of people just are not used Doing a lot of map reading and are not real good with north, south, east and west and so forth. So this is a way to try to get that and simplify it. The other thing I'll say although we're showing you this overlay map with the zones really the map preceding it is what we're showing to the public generally as the entire evacuation area just to make it simpler and to show people which areas have been evacuated in which areas are in warning.

This is what the public can expect to see more A larger scale one that comes out and not the zone. System that we showed is really more for our internal use.

Thank you very much supervisor Adam.

Yeah, I was just wondering if we could go back to that list of evacuations are we are we getting ready to lift any of those or I mean it seems like And I haven't been down there, so I don't know. But is it still burning next to all of

that? It's still burning pretty much from the county line out to that top point that was mentioned by Chief Peterson earlier. So I don' foresee any of these being lifted today. We did not have any new evacuation areas yesterday and hopefully we won't have any during this. But it's all contingent obviously on the fire activity and the danger and That fire could slop over the top of the ridges and then come down and get wind driven and come down towards the populated areas.

Okay, yeah, that's pretty rough country in there and it's tough to cut a dozer line.

It is very much straight up and down in a lot of those areas.

Yeah, the country doesn't get any tougher than where this fire was.

I don't see any more lights. Thank you.

The next part of the presentation is with Mr. Farram who wanted to talk a little bit about thinking ahead on our watershed impacts.

Morning Madam Chair, members of the board. So while the fire continues to burn we've been tracking its progress into Santa Barbara County and obviously we're concerned about two particular items as we do with any fire in terms of watershed impacts. One is that the flood threat below the fire that we've seen in past years and as of this slide yesterday we were primarily looking at the Carpinteria area but as you heard this morning the fire has made A westward progression, so that area will now expand.

And then of course the water quality impacts associated with our service water reservoirs Jamison Reservoir owned by Montecito Water District. That watershed was completely impacted by the fire and the fire is now actively in the Gibraltar Reservoir Watershed which is downstream of Jameson and of course Gibraltar has been affected a lot by the Zacca Fire and then the Ray Fire and now they'll get additional impacts from this fire.

We've prepared an initial flood control plan of attack and are currently working on implementing that. I would just as a side note, probably little noted in board meetings past we had emergency contracts put in place by your board. We will now be implementing those where we can hire contractors. We don't have a lot of time here it's December 12th And so we will be moving contractors into our debris bases as soon as we are allowed to by law enforcement and fire department. And so, we're preparing that right now. The scope of that seems to have increased as of this morning where the eastward or westward progression We'll include some of our debris basins in Montecito. I will say we are in somewhat better shape here because because of past fires, we have debris basins in place and our plan that we have adopted and have adopted at your board is in the case of a fire, we would go in there and prep those basins for For the winter and then be prepared to maintain them through the winter.

So that's the work that we're doing now back on the watershed Issues, we are coordinating with the water purveyors for water supply issues if water becomes unusable from the surface water reservoirs for a period of time because of the inflow of associated with the fire then we would be looking at how we coordinate Water supply for the south coast and we'll be doing that over the next days as well next page please This picture I think sums it up. This is Hunkel Dam, Jameson Reservoir in the background.

You might have heard the dam tender's residence was also burned. He was evacuated prior to that so he is safe and we're happy to hear that but this will have serious impacts for Jameson Reservoir for Montecito. And then finally just to show you what we're doing every day We put together this map that identifies the watersheds and almost impossible to see, but there's little orange dots on the bottom there that are debris basin sites. So as the fire progresses and we get updated fire perimeter maps, we map the watershed size, the percentage burned where our debris basins are And then we would act as such for clearing those debates. One of the debris basins right where the pointer is, Gobindor Debris Basin, its watershed was entirely burned.

We will be moving into that debris basin hopefully this week and start that work. Keeping in mind the fire is still going up there so we were mindful of not putting people in harm's way but In the lower areas, we can get into some of those basins. I would say also in Carpinteria, Carpinteria has the benefit of some of the more flood resistant part of our county. The Carpinteria Valley Watershed Project was a federal flood control project built in the 1970s. Very large debris basin on Santa Monica Creek which is number 12, watershed 12 identified there.

Uh, and a concrete channel that runs all the way down to the slough. And so a high level of flood protection there for a watershed that has exhibited extreme flood threat in the 60s is now in much better shape but I will leave it with With the comment that we will have to work hard to get out to the public and that if you are below a burn area and considering flood insurance, there is a 30 day grace period before that flood insurance premium becomes effective. And so it is December 12th now today, and so if you were to purchase flood insurance today. You would not be eligible for claim until January 12th.

Having a fire of this size this late in the year puts us in a tough predicament in that respect.

Any questions for Mr. Faber?

Our next presenter, I believe is in Santa Barbara. Is Dr. Dean there to talk about our county's

health? The monitoring stations for the air quality index have been updated hourly and this morning they continue to record unhealthy air throughout Santa Barbara City and Carpinteria. Of note, Lompoc right now at this point is also rated as unhealthy and Goleta has improved to moderate. And this is a very changing and flexible situation so people wanting to know the air quality should look on the website hourly to see the latest update.

Air quality warnings remain in effect right now for the regions that I just noted. The public information on safety has been communicated to our stakeholder partners. We are continuing to offer free mask distribution sites throughout Santa Barbara County, and the public will be notified of those with a press release this morning so those sites have been posted.

Outreach has been provided to offer masks to field workers and our department is assisting in that communication. There is also a plan to distribute the N95 masks to all county employees. In our messaging, we're emphasizing the ability to reuse the N95 mask so that people know they don't have to get a new one every day. They can usually reuse their mask if they are able and the other messaging is that the best way to protect their lungs is really to limit exposure to those tiny particles in the air. If they're able to give their lungs a break and leave the unhealthy So area for a few hours a day that will improve their breathing.

Thank you, any questions?

Supervisor Lavinino.

Thank you Madam Chair. Dr. Dean I don't really think it's a question for you but is there anybody there from APCD or Air Quality?

No there is not.

All right, well I'll just throw this out there. Okay so I was sending people to the website rair.org from APCD air pollution control. Santa Maria was actually showing in the green and good quality air when it was snowing ash and it's piling up on the car. So it's very hard for me to tell people. Hey, go to the website and they're looking at it going hey our air quality's in the green when they're dusting ash off the car. So can you help us?

Sure, and that is a great question. So the ash that we see falling, those large chunks of ash, is different than the invisible particulate matter that the AQI is measuring when it looks at the PM10 or PM2.5. For people with conditions like asthma and really for anyone that's exposed long-term, it's those tiny particles that are really most damaging to health. So the particulate matter 10 and 2.5 microns in diameter and smaller is really what can cause the breathing difficulties, the health impacts. So even though we see ash falling, the air quality index might still be good.

So it's good in those areas. I would still advise people caution to not play in the ash, clean up the ash, stir up the ash. So the good news is that the air quality index is good. The bad news is that ash is still falling so people should use caution but it is much safer to be outside in those areas when the AQI is good.

Supervisor Wolk? Any other- Thank you, Madam Chair. Dr. Dean just seeing you here reminds me that and maybe Ms. Miyasato is going to do this later but that we are going to have another community meeting today at 4 o'clock at San Marcos High School. But in seeing you here, the information you've provided at the last two meetings has been very well received. And I know a lot of people have individual questions and so those community meetings are important so that people understand that it's not just us asking questions but if they want answers to specific things they can come to the meeting tonight. Can you just talk, because this has come up a lot about the children.

Because most of the schools are out and what parents can be doing for and with their kids staying inside with masks and things like that?

Absolutely, Madam Chair, Supervisor Wolf. The effects on children are important for families to understand because their body mass is smaller. So a child whose body mass is half the size of an adult who's exposed to the same unhealthy air may exhibit symptoms and have shortness of breath or difficulty breathing when the adults in the house do not. This is particularly true for children with asthma. So families with small children need to be aware that their children might be having difficulty breathing or symptoms. And what I recommend is, to give the kids lungs a break if you're able to get out of the area even for four or five hours a day head north or head south to get the kids into clean air. If you're in one of the regions that has an AQI in the unhealthy range or even unhealthy for sensitive groups and you have small children, those small children are sensitive.

So even leaving the area for a few hours a day will will improve their health and allow them to breathe easier. For people who are not able to do that, I recommend that they keep the children indoors again if they are in an area that has an AQI of unhealthy so that the children are less exposed to those tiny invisible particles. Importantly, those tiny particles can still get into indoor spaces. So even staying indoors people will still be exposed to some of the PM 10 or PM 2.5 albeit less than if they were walking around outdoors.

Dr. Dean, I have a question and it may not be for you exactly either. I know that there has been a lot of outreach to Spanish speaking communities and particularly ag workers, farm workers. I see our Ag Commissioner Kathy Fisher behind you. I think the message has not gotten to gardeners and people who are cleaning up in various communities. And using blowers to get rid of the ash and clean up, so I don't know. I know our Spanish on the website and in the town hall meetings is getting better but I think that's still a missing link from what I'm seeing.

Would anyone else like to comment on that? Otherwise, I'll say that thank you for Madam Chair. Thank you for pointing that out and we continue to emphasize in our messaging not to use leaf blowers, not to stir up ash but will continue to emphasize that and make sure that it's translated into Spanish. And when I speak at the town hall tonight, I will emphasize that as well. And like you, I have driven down this street and seen people using leaf blowers blowing up ash.

Without

masks, supervisor

rules. Dr. Dean I don't know if you know the answer to this question but can you comment on the animal rescue resources? How we're doing in Santa Barbara with the larger animals and dogs and cats and things like that.

Yes, Madam Chair. Give me one second. Do you want to comment on that? I'm going to defer to our Director Vonda Reynoso.

Madam Chair, Supervisor Wolff, from the latest information we have, the Santa Barbara Humane Society does not have additional space. We have transferred some of our animals from the county shelter up to the Santa Maria Humane Society so that we can have more space in our shelter. With regards to big animals, we still have space.

So should people still come to the Santa Barbara Shelter and then you will move them? Or

what's the message? The message is that to call the hotline first and then we will triage and assist with placement of the animals.

And what's

the hotline? And we have been messaging that on our social media. Do you know the hotline number? I don't right off, thank you. It's 681-4332. Okay, thank you very much.

Supervisor Williams, did you have a question?

Well I was just going to also tell folks in case they're thinking about evacuating that many, many north and mid-county hotels that people would evacuate to are temporarily suspending their no pet policies either officially or unofficially. And so a lot of places that people can go to get out of the ash Are not enforcing no pet policies.

Thank you, Dr. Dean.

I believe Rob Lewin is up on Emergency Operations Center.

Madam Chair and Supervisors, the incident is run by an Incident Management Team under Unified Command. And their job is to make sure that they're doing everything they can to suppress the fire. Our job at the Emergency Operations Center is to make sure that we're doing everything we can to work on the impacts on our communities. Those impacts have included, of course, evacuations and the care and sheltering of those folks that have been evacuated.

It also involves dealing with the smoke impacts, the impacts on our animals and our livestock, and on our agriculture products as well as the continuing issues of power outages. We are the location where in conjunction with the sheriff's office we do alerts. We are fortunate in this county that we have a very nice emergency operations center. But more important, that we have an emergency operation center that is staffed by dedicated county employees and other outside and partner agencies.

With me today is the Cal OES representative, and if you have any questions for him he'd be glad to come up and answer them. We have employees, about 50 that have been working continuously in our EOC since the power outage began. Some of those employees had been evacuated and some of those employees, one of them even lost her home. The mandatory evacuation It is very, very difficult on our communities and we recognize that every minute we're operating.

We know that when we send out an alert that people are getting impacted throughout the county. That's how the system unfortunately is currently designed when we send out a wireless emergency alert. But we truly believe that it's better to notify the entire county if that's the best we can do in order to get those thousands of people out of harm's way. It's not easy, it's stressful. Evacuating is stressful, being alerted is stressful, smoke is stressful and I can assure you that everyone in that Emergency Operations Center is sensitive to that and is doing all their due diligence to make sure that every action that we take in there is identified on what the other impacts will be from what we do.

We're all in this together, whether we're the city jurisdictions or the special districts. The utility company, we're in it together and I know I've talked with most of you and seen most of you that you're on this partnership as well. What we need the community to do is to make sure that they're signed up for Aware and Prepare alerts. They need to go to awareandprepare.org and sign up, so that when we're sending out these 90 character text messages in WEAs which are inadequate in defining the area, that they have the other information available to them immediately through the Aware and Prepare alerts which will send them an email and a text message.

One of the fallouts of this incident from the very beginning has been a power supply problem because of the transmission lines that supply our county. Southern California Edison is in our EOC and we're in constant communication with their emergency operations center. We need the public to be prepared for a multi-day outage. This means that they need to make sure that they have flashlights and batteries, that they have the ability to charge their telephone whether they're doing that through car charges.

We need them to have radios that use batteries. If we end up in a power outage, to leave their freezer doors closed and their refrigerators closed to preserve their food stock. To have an ample supply of food stock that doesn't require a food supply. If it gets cold out, to not use their barbecues to heat their homes because of carbon monoxide poisoning. We need them to conserve electricity now, because the impacts on these power lines is now. And if we can reduce the load on the lines that are still intact, we're going to be helping and maintaining that power supply.