Six months later, emergency upgrades after Northern California fires slow to take effect

Six months after Linda Tunis died in her home at Journey's End mobile home park in northern Santa Rosa during the Tubbs fire, her daughter still questions whether she could have saved her.

Jessica Tunis didn't know the fire she could see from her Rincon Valley home was destroying Fountaingrove and heading toward her mother's house off Mendocino Avenue. She was focused on the elderly residents in an apartment building she manages, making sure they were awake and prepared to evacuate. The 2:08 a.m. warning message she received from the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office troubles her still. It indicated the fire had already leapt Highway 101 to the west of Journey's End.

“I keep going through it a million times in my mind,” Jessica Tunis, 49, said. “What could I have done to save her? My brain won't stop six months later. I still have nightmares.”

The October fires in Sonoma County killed 24 people and burned nearly 5,300 homes. It exposed clear failings in the county's preparations for a large-scale emergency, most significantly its ineffective public warnings, which drew widespread criticism and spurred lawmakers and others to consider quicker and more effective ways of warning people in catastrophic natural disasters.

The Northern California firestorm was the most deadly and destructive wildfire disaster in California history, killing 44 people across four counties - Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino and Yuba. More than 100,000 residents were forced to flee and about 6,200 homes were destroyed in the North Bay.

The crisis illuminated several failures and missteps by emergency authorities, including:

The slow and uneven mobilization of California's nationally renowned firefighting force;

The inability of local 911 dispatch centers to effectively handle a massive volume of calls in a widespread disaster, and their lack of preplanned instructions to help people trapped by wildfire;

The need for earlier and more informative warnings sent through multiple platforms; and

The importance of faster evacuations.

Veteran local fire official Jack Piccinini was chief of the Rincon Valley and Windsor fire districts during the October firestorm. He learned during the first hours that help from out-of-the-area agencies would not come soon enough.

“Where in the heck are they?” he said that night.

He said California firefighters are still going to be outgunned by wildfires, which have been increasing in scale and ferocity each year, fueled by drought-stricken woodlands with blighted trees and dense, dry underbrush.

“When Mother Nature wants to show us who is boss, she will, and there will be nothing we can do to stop it,” Piccinini said. “That may be a hard pill for people to swallow.”

Changes ahead

The October firestorm could eventually spur widespread changes, from the way national cellphone companies send official government alerts down to local programs thinning overgrown forests. But few changes are in place should disaster strike tomorrow.

The Federal Communications Commission is taking steps to upgrade the Wireless Emergency Alert system for pushing notifications onto cellphones, allowing messages to be longer and requiring cellphone companies to improve the ability to geographically target messages. The Amber Alert-type messages were not sent by Sonoma, Mendocino and Napa counties during the disaster, much to the distress of fire victims and evacuees. Lake County did employ the warning technology to send out alerts.

By May 2019, wireless companies must increase the length of messages from 90 to 360 characters. By November 2019, messages must be sent with greater precision, within one-tenth of a mile of the target location.

California lawmakers are considering a slate of proposed post-fire legislation that would address some of the problems exposed during the crisis. These include establishing a statewide protocol for emergency warnings, requiring garage door manufacturers to have backup batteries and forcing utility companies such as PG&E to establish protocols for de-energizing the power grid during times of high fire risk.

Gov. Jerry Brown is considering a push from lawmakers and fire officials to revise the budget and bolster the state's mutual-aid firefighting system with an infusion of $184 million. The money would go toward new engines, more firefighters and staff at the state's major fire air operations center at McClellan Airfield near Sacramento, and a new system for dispatching requests for assistance by areas under siege.

State Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, whose district includes southeastern Sonoma County, co-authored legislation to create a statewide warning protocol. The Atlas Peak fire burned within a half-block of Dodd's home in the Silverado area of Napa County. Two of his neighbors were killed, and 151 houses burned in his community alone. Dodd said he received no notification, and only discovered the hillside was on fire after the power went out and he stepped outside.

“Every single person deserves to be adequately notified of an impending disaster, and that's where the work is in front of us,” Dodd said.

Sonoma County has launched an in-depth review of what worked and what didn't by an outside facilitator charged with producing an after-action report. Sonoma County Administrator Sheryl Bratton hopes to bring the report to the Board of Supervisors in June.

Supervisor Shirlee Zane, the longest-serving board member, indicated this week she is growing impatient over the small number of changes made so far to the county's plan for warning people about an emergency, an urgent task slowed by the gears of bureaucracy.

Bratton and Board of Supervisors Chairman James Gore have said the county is prepared to warn people by forced cellphone alerts if a new disaster struck.

But Zane wants to see public warning drills to test how effective a new alert program might be and teach the public how these systems will be used, and where and how to get more detailed information.

Zane said she hasn't received a satisfactory response to her questions about how the county will warn people when the power goes out and cellphone towers go down.

“We're moving in the right direction, but I'm not confident that we're there yet,” Zane said.

Managing a disaster

The disaster provided a real-time test of the region's ability to handle a large-scale crisis.

Government employees, nonprofit workers and volunteers now say they have never before been better prepared to organize evacuations, establish shelters, feed thousands of people and make judgment calls on a variety of scenarios ranging from evacuation to repatriation.

Bratton arrived sometime around midnight Oct. 8 at the county's emergency operations center, where she was the director in charge. She had limited training for a disaster of such proportions.

She had manuals for her role as emergency director and had previously met with emergency services staff to discuss it, she said. The past six months have been a crash course in managing an emergency, from crisis point to recovery.

“As an organization, we need to do more at every level,” Bratton said.

Countywide, new hires have always been told about their potential role as disaster workers, but otherwise training levels varied, according to Bratton. On the night of the fires, people showed up ready to work, but bringing them up to speed on procedures and tasks took precious time and resources.

The county's embattled emergency services division - charged with anticipating disasters and managing the response - is now slated for an overhaul, with officials discussing whether to shift its oversight from the county administrator to the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office.

After the fires, the division and its former manager, Chris Helgren, faced criticism for failing to employ effective methods of warning people, in large part because of Helgren's decision against sending Amber Alert-style messages to cellphones. Helgren was moved to another department in February and has since retired.

The county appointed an interim manager, Chris Godley, in March, and part of his job will be to recommend changes.

Godley said he's preparing recommendations for how to give county employees at all levels more training for their roles as disaster service workers, from county supervisors communicating with the public to lower-level staff. Godley said staff turnover is a constant challenge to the county's readiness.

Since the fires, the county division charged with preparing for a worst-case scenario has updated its ability to work remotely and established storm patrols to survey the impact of rains.

Godley said the division is acting with urgency and a sense that “we don't have time to wait.”

“The skills, the abilities and experiences (gained during the fires) have changed the culture in our community and county government,” Godley said.

State Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, wants the culture changed statewide, starting with revamping firefighting capabilities within two years. Key, too, are initiatives promoting healthy forests, addressing wildland blight from drought and insects, and managing vegetation buildup.

McGuire is among a number of state lawmakers pushing for the governor to invest $184 million to improve firefighting, far beyond the $25 million currently on the table. The larger outlay is facing considerable pushback in Sacramento.

“They've said, ‘This is going to be expensive,'” McGuire said. “You're damn right, but it's not as costly as losing 44 lives.”

Urgent rescue missions

People were largely on their own in the initial hours of the firestorm, when stiff gusts up to 68 mph launched six massive blazes and other smaller fires in Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino and Lake counties. They were awakened by wind, the smell of smoke, a neighbor or a phone call. Some pounded on doors, drove strangers to safety and made heroic efforts at survival and rescue. Firefighters described watching people running out of homes already on fire.

First responders, too, were operating under extraordinary conditions, and in that first day were focused simply on getting people to safety. They were sent in small teams to burning hillsides and valleys blanketed by smoke. They made independent decisions about where to make stands with little direction from dispatchers or supervisors.

“I don't think you'll ever have enough resources to deal with a fire of that size,” said Santa Rosa Police Chief Hank Schreeder. “But can you deal with a smaller incident and be much better prepared, get control of it, manage it and what comes with it? Yes.”

He's sending department leaders through a federal training program in Texas that teaches decision-making strategies for first responders handling complex emergencies. Schreeder said he expects Santa Rosa and Sonoma County workers will become experts when deployed elsewhere in times of emergency.

“We're in a better position now, and that's trial by fire,” he said.

For an annual training at the end of April, local fire service leaders will focus on how strike teams can act more independently in the field during chaotic conditions without the benefit of good communications.

Piccinini, a longtime Santa Rosa battalion chief, led many such strike teams before his retirement earlier this year as Rincon Valley's fire chief. During the firestorm, he remembers driving up to a scene where a small engine crew was battling a hopeless house fire, and yelling over a loudspeaker for them to move on.

“Are you really having an impact? Are you making any difference? If you can't say yes, then pick up your fire hose and go somewhere else,” Piccinini said.

Warning the public

Sonoma County emergency officials sent dozens of alerts through phone calls, text messages and emails to warn people about the firestorm heading their way. But those messages used sign-up programs and reached a limited number of people, as reported by The Press Democrat and later underscored in a state Office of Emergency Services review of the county's warning program.

Neil Bregman, Santa Rosa city's emergency preparedness coordinator, said he wasn't even aware the county had a federal license allowing it to issue push notifications to cellphones. If he had, he says he would have sent them. Today, he and other city staff and police officers have access to use cellphone alerts, and they're prepared to send them when needed. Sheriff's dispatchers, too, can now send mass cellphone alerts.

Bregman said they've learned other lessons, from strategies for repopulating burned neighborhoods to opening and managing shelters. Protocol had called for relying on the Red Cross to manage shelters, but local officials learned from the fires the large nonprofit may not be able to leverage its resources fast enough during a disaster. Bregman said they're sending city employees to Red Cross trainings so they have that expertise.

Bregman recalled how his heart pounded in the early morning hours of Oct. 9 when he lost a phone connection with Fire Chief Tony Gossner, who was in the midst of requesting an evacuation of Fountaingrove while fire roared in the background. Bregman feared for the chief's safety and needed more information before sending the alert. Several minutes passed before they reconnected. The alert went out at 1:55 a.m.

The fire had already jumped Highway 101 to the west. Jessica Tunis would get her warning 13 minutes later.

“We used everything we could, everything we had,” Bregman said.

You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 707-521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.