Board of Supervisors — 2018-01-03

But in the end, you know you do man-made projects. I'll throw it out on the river and let it go where it wants to go.

Yeah.

Good morning. And welcome to this first meeting of the new year, January 3rd 2018 here in the Santa Barbara hearing room and Supervisor Adam is participating remotely from the Santa Maria hearing room. Will you call the roll Mr. Allen?

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

CEO Miyasato do you have

a report for us today? Good morning, Chair Hartman and board members. We have a quick update for you this morning before we get into our main discussion item related to the Thomas Fire when we were here before the holiday break. The fire was still very active and we gave you an update. This is an update now to tell you about where we are now that the fire has been contained. And some of the impacts that we expect with the coming rain. So I've asked Rob Lewin, our Director of Office of Emergency Management and Tom Fairam, our Deputy Director from Public Works to give a very brief update to the board.

Thank you, Ms. Miyasato and Chair Hartman and Supervisors, thank you for having us. We are going to give a very brief presentation on where we're at on contingency planning for what is a very real problem that we're faced with. The contingency planning was underway previously for the fires that we've already had in the county but obviously with the Thomas fire, the impacts are much greater and affect a much larger number of people And a much larger number of residents and businesses and infrastructure.

So to that effort, the first thing that we did was started making some plans drafts and met with operational folks from the different jurisdictions that are impacted. And then last night meeting was convened of city managers, public work directors, fire chiefs, police chiefs sheriff. Ms. Miyasato, to take a look at the drafts that we had prepared and then to weigh in on them and give us direction on how to proceed.

Probably the most important thing that occurred last night is that we have unity of effort. That all the jurisdictions and the county are linked together on our approach to dealing with this very monumental issue that we have. What we have done so far is, we have identified those areas that are impacted. The Forest Service and CAL FIRE have both organized teams that are now on the ground working hard to do scientific analysis of the impacts.

Because of the time of year that we're in, we could not wait for their full report. They have attended all of our meetings though and An interactive map that I'm gonna show you shortly that will identify those areas in the impact area. We also are making efforts through our public information office and our JIC, our joint information center on how we're gonna approach public outreach that will be done both in English and Spanish. And it will also try to be closely coordinated with Ventura County.

We're obviously monitoring the weather all the time now. And we have been doing debris clearing, which Mr. Fairam will share with you in a moment. And we're coming up with a strategy on how to issue alerts. This is very difficult because rather than just having one type of an alert that says evacuate, evacuating may be the last thing that we want some people to do because it could put them in harm's way. So we're dealing with trying to have messaging that will be comprehensive for the different types of impacts that people face.

And then, of course, finally, we have to be able to respond to the emergencies as they develop. Just to give you some background, here is a picture of flooding that occurred in 1964 following the previous Summers fire, the Coyote Fire. This is that same area now. So we know that this area flooded once, it could flood again. Here's a corner of Coast Village Road and Olive Mill as it looked after the Romero Fire in 1971 after those winter storms. And here's that same intersection now.

This was a drive we did just yesterday as we were touring around the impact area. And already, we're starting to see just through gravity rock fall. One rock that you can see in this picture could easily close a road and so we're very concerned about evacuation routes being hampered and emergency response routes being hampered. This is a series of pictures from 1995 flood. There was atmospheric rivers that came in sequence during that year, and even without a fire previously we had significant rainfall. But this is the type of thing that we should be expecting in the next two winters or maybe even three as the ground heals from the burn.

And then I'm gonna turn this over now to Tom to talk about what they've been doing.

Good morning Madam Chair, members of the board. So as Mr. Lewin referenced we have started actually as soon as the fire department would let us in to the debris basins we started doing that clearing this happens to be San Ysidro Debris Basin being cleared we were actually out there Mr. McAuliffe and I were out there yesterday and that basin will be done today And then at the far east corner, Gobernador Basin. The top left shows work ongoing and the bottom right shows that complete. I'm glad to report that by the end of the week all but one of the basins will be done. We'll have some work spilling over into next week but even at that those basins are all online and fully operational.

Next slide. Want to reference a Royal Paradon basin shown here. Five of these basins were completed completely by Public Works Flood Control crews. We have contractors, we have granite construction, we appreciate their assistance but your staff is out there working very hard they worked after Christmas doing this work and it's just a tribute to the quality people that we have out there working so hard And I think the next one, that's actually thanks to your budget approval. That's a county-owned piece of equipment with a county operator in it working hard and that machine will be very key to this winner's response so I think that completes ours.

So what I'd like to do now is show you an interactive map that is not public yet, but it is something that we're continually working on to be able to provide the communities with being able to look at the impacts that they have. And I wanted to add So let me just start off with that. This again will have the ability much like we had during the fire where people will be able to put in their address and then it will be able to locate where their homes are. There are four kinds of areas that are impacted by this fire.

The people that live in the burn area obviously have an impact because they have the slides that could occur in their backyards. We've identified a buffer zone that's about a quarter mile around the entire perimeter, those people are because they're so close to the burn area couldn't be impacted and in most cases they're downhill of the burn area. Then we've taken a look at all the watercourses. The watercourses will become debris flows, and so what we did is we took a 20-foot elevation from the bottom of each watercourse and created the polygon to identify those locations. And finally, the fourth area is the area of those folks that live in the 500 year flood zone.

When you have a burn scar this large, there's just a very large increase in the amount of water that will flow down into the flood zone. So that becomes an issue as well and you can see that the size of this means that many people will be impacted and we're calculating those numbers. Who did the maps? So we brought in a series of different GIS folks from different agencies as well as some mutual aid GIS folks from other counties and so we put it together. The idea of these sorts of map creations, using these polygons was based on Bringing the operations folks from the different agencies together and deciding what is the best course. We'll validate this, of course with the Baird team and the work team that are the state and federal folks.

They're extremely helpful they were wonderful during the fire and now I think this visual says it all. Supervisor Williams?

Now, if my memory of other maps is at all even accurate that some of these areas that you have shown are not even in the 100-year floodplain. And so this will be a shock to many property owners, most property owners that are not in the hundred year flood plain have not bought flood insurance and To make things a little more confusing, the city just sent out some notices of changes of boundaries of the 100-year floodplain.

So will we in that communication at least articulate the option that people who are not in 100-year floodplain can still buy flood insurance? Mr. Farrum sufficiently scared me that I did and you know, it's if you're outside the hundred-year floodplain, it's not that much money and it's one of these things that we will be giving that advice in the letter or at least a bit showing them the option

Madam Chair, Supervisor Williams. It's important to note as you mentioned with the fire it's a game changer because what we've seen even in non-fire The channels that run through our community can be completely filled with debris. And there's no way to get in there and stop that during a flood, so the flood water is going to go somewhere and it's going to go outside. So even though you're not in a FEMA-designated floodplain, they do that analysis with a healed watershed and a clear flow analysis, and they don't take the debris into account. Some of the pictures that Mr. Lewin showed earlier show that the hazard area is much wider than what You would normally think of it so that the fire is indeed a game changer for this and the community needs to be aware of that.

Supervisor Wolf. Thank you, Madam Chair. When you just changed it to yellow what did that reflect?

So what I did is the 500-year flood zone is shown now on the yellow. That would be where we would normally expect people to be required if they're purchasing homes to have flood insurance, but now of course when we add in using our criteria it is much greater as Supervisor Williams noted.

Okay, thank you. And then in the handout that we have there's the map and it has different numbers. So other than the acreage burned is there any, should I be getting or gleaning any other significance from this map with the numbers?

Madam Chair, Supervisor Wolf. I believe that map that was included in your handout was pared down from our presentation here. That's a watershed map that shows the portions of the watersheds that were burned and shows the severity of the situation we have. So that map is a fire footprint. If that's the map you're looking at could Yeah, that's our watershed map. It simply takes each of the major watersheds and then identifies how much of those watersheds were burned which in the upper end of the watershed which is where our highest rainfall is they're all 100% burned. The lower end obviously isn't but most of our runoff and flood threat comes from the upper watershed Yeah, that one right there.

Thanks. Okay good and then the other question I have has to do with the Whittier fire so has that been incorporated into your planning?

Madam Chair and Supervisor, that's correct. This plan includes the Alamo, the Ray Fire, the Sherpa Fire and the Whittier Fire. And we're very concerned about Tukaloti Canyon below the Whittier Fire as well as of course El Capitan Campground. We have been working with El Capitan Campground I know they now have a consultant that they brought on to do some emergency planning But we intend to follow up also with a letter to the folks that are in those impact areas.

It'll be a slightly different letter, but also with the same sort of gravity of threat

Okay, and I'm sorry one final question. Where would someone go on our website? Is this under OES or public works or is it multiple

areas? So Mr. Pinto just let me know that we went live this morning on our recovery and rain ready website if they go to a county of SB website that will be a link there for it.

All right, and just a final comment and that is to thank all of you. I know that there was a meeting with FEMA and federal other agencies yesterday so I think we did get some good news but really our local folks, all of you that are right here have just done an exceptional job. And I'm very proud of the work that you're doing for the county and Ventura County as well. Thank you Madam Chair.

Supervisor Adam, did you have anything you wanted to ask or add?

No. I think you guys are doing a great job and unfortunately if we would've taken some steps before this maybe we could have not had almost 300,000 acres to deal with. But hopefully we learned a lesson. I noticed that there's some public comment going on in the form of letters to the editor these days talking about reviving our control burn program, and I think with good reason.

But at this point, we're kind of at the mercy of nature and if she allows us to have gentle rain years that thing can grow some hair on it and not be as movable as it is right now. But if we end up with the atmospheric river event going on, this has got the potential to be catastrophic. So that's it.

And I just wanted to add publicly that during the break, I heard nothing but positive and very grateful comments about the work that everyone did in fighting the fires. And particularly the interactive map and the communications At the high school, the daily briefings and the caliber of the people who were there reporting to people. It was just I remember Katrina in thinking that government really failed and what we've heard is across the board it was government at its finest and The firefighters and the public safety personnel get a lot of the credit. But I know behind the works, public works people were at night out there clearing office of emergency management people from across jurisdictions and across departments within the county. And day after day it gets to be a real slog and But people kept the morale up, and I've never felt prouder to be part of county government than I have.

And I just thank you so much. All right, so there is our CEO's report and we have to continue the effort to let people know through all our media of communication about this very sobering map that you've presented. So with that, we're turning to our first public comment for matters not on today's agenda. Do we have any speaker slips Mr. Allen?

No request to speak.

All right, so turning to our only item on the departmental agenda today, would you read that into the record?

Chair Hartman and members of the board, this is an item for public health. This hearing to consider recommendations regarding the re-ratification and declaration of local health emergency in the Thomas Fire. This was last passed on December 21st, 2017.

And Dr. Del Reynoso are you going to lead us off here?

Good morning, Chair Hartman and members of the board. I am here with my team to give you an update about our progress in identifying and inspecting damaged and destroyed homes. But before that, I'd like to walk you through the process just so that you have an idea of what our department is doing. And Susan will be passing out Some sheets with information. And if I can draw your attention to the slide, this is something that we put together just for to explain how we are inspecting household hazardous waste. So we began with after the declaration, we received a list of properties with damage and Or destroyed structures from EOC. We checked on the assessor's website for the property owner's names, we then reach for the owner via the internet because while we were able to enter the properties without consent, we wanted to reach out and We connect with the property owners.

So we were able, unfortunately, find only a small number of property owners. We used a variety of methods. We called, we reached out via LinkedIn, via Facebook office numbers and We're not able to be very successful. So we also attended the community meeting out in Carpinteria last week, and we were able to connect with homeowners who attended and heard about our services.

So once we connect with the property owners, then we walk them through how we are going to enter the property. Prior to that, we have a list of questions that we ask the property owners. Then we schedule the home assessment with the property owner or their designee and some properties will say meet with my contractor, Scheduled to meet there with us. We send then, once the meeting or the appointment has been made, we two of our hazmat inspectors go out onto the property. They do a visual inspection of the site and they pull the hazardous materials aside.

We have a contractor who will conduct asbestos assessment and abatement for structures built before 1985. And they will be performed where the toxic materials have been identified. We also schedule a pickup with the contracted hauler. We sign off on the manifest and the hazardous materials are transported off-site to the licensed facility, and we certify then That that site is has been done in process. So the issue here is what happens when we have of the 46 damaged and destroyed properties? What happens when we don't make contact with With the property owners, we are working pretty much around the clock. We started immediately after the declaration to connect with the property owners and this morning we will send out a letter.

To the registered owners saying this is our process, please call us. We'd like to engage you in this process to look at your property, to identify the hazardous waste. And then we are also taking an ad out in a paper starting today. We've worked on the ad. We are going to reach out. We've also posted it on Twitter. On the county website as well as our own website. So we're doing really heavy messaging just because we want to connect with the property owners and engage them in this process, however We are giving ourselves until Friday If we have not made contact with the property owners, the game plan is to connect with planning and development as well as with local fire personnel so that they can assist us to access the properties.

We anticipate that some of the properties may have locked gates that we need assistance with. And contacts have been made with our fire department as well as our colleagues in P&D. Any questions on the diagram before I give you the updates? Regarding our activities, so given our urgency after the declaration we created a one page handout describing again our process. We want to make sure that the property owners know what we would like to do and engage them in the process. We translated the document both, we have it in English and in Spanish. And it was disseminated again in the CARB meeting as well as we posted it on social media. And the websites, the county website and our department website. We've ordered and received equipment for inspectors.

I know that there was some questions about why can't you do it immediately after the declaration was made? We want to make sure that our staff are trained and we do it methodically so we have the equipment. The safety plan is in place. We've trained our staff, we've developed protocols for our staff to follow once they're out. Actually, once the initial conversation or connection is made with the property owners.

As I mentioned with P and D with our planning and development as well as with fire. So we the challenge now is really connecting We have an urgency about that and we're hoping to make a good dent in it. So far, we have reached or made connection with six out of 46. Since last time we met, we have assessed three properties and learned from those three initial assessments.

One had minor damage and the owner shared with us that they plan to resolve the damage to their water well on their own, and two had major damages. And the structures were unsound, unsafe for us to enter. So we will be working with planning and development to see for structures that are 100% damaged and not safe for us to enter what are the next steps involved?

And that concludes my updates on our activities.

I had a couple of questions. In previous fires, has this been the process and we're simply reengaging the process that we've used in the past?

And Mike probably is the only one that I know who has institutional knowledge about this. But my understanding is that with the previous 2008 fire, that the state pretty much handled the process and then now it's the county's responsibility and we're following protocol with what other counties who have experienced. The Northern County Ventura so our process is very similar to what everyone else has been doing.

And if we do have mudslides and flood damage, is there a similar process? I mean does that also release hazardous materials that public health needs to get involved in. Is this something we need to be looking at prospectively as well? That is a great

question and I will hand that over to Larry.

Larry's in Santa Maria.

Are we on here?

We hear you, we don't see you.

Okay well Chair Hartman and members of the board I guess you don't have the benefit of seeing my handsome face here today but I'll do the best I can in spite of that.

No, but it's amusing to be

looking at Peter while hearing your voice instead of like Peter speaking with Larry Faye's voice.

I'll try and lip sync it for you. Go ahead.

We haven't rehearsed this yet so if it doesn't go down as smoothly as you'd I would We're going to get into demolition and reconstruction. It seems to me the same or similar household hazardous waste issues would apply, and we would think to apply a similar protocol. As Dr. De Ranoso had indicated, the protocol that we are following is well established over the last 7-8 years of wildfires throughout this state with regard Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you Madam Chair and Supervisors. We are planning as part of the contingency plan to identify critical infrastructure, hazardous material sites that are registered and any other type of critical Issues that we could develop because of flooding it is a real concern during flooding and in other areas there can often be Soup sort of created as things mixed together and particularly if it gets into an industrial area And so we are working on that kind of contingency planning

Good, thank you. Are there any other questions or comments? I think we've lost the visual for Santa Maria

You mean you can't even see me anymore?

No, we can't see you but we can hear you. Did you have any other

comments,

Supervisor Adam?

No.

Okay.

I'm fresh out.

Then we'll see if there are any public comment slips on this matter.

No request to speak.

All right, and may I have a motion to accept this resolution, adopt this resolution? Supervisor Williams.

So moved. Second.

And roll call vote please because we have Supervisor Adam in Santa Maria.

Mr. Adam Okay with that this meeting is adjourned and we meet again here on Tuesday January

9th

for a changing of

the guard.