Report: Santa Rosa needs better disaster communications

Patchy communication hamstrung Santa Rosa’s initial reactions to the October 2017 firestorm, a problem the city could address by helping form a new regional disaster response agency and improving how it gathers and shares information when tragedy strikes, a post-fire report found.

The City Council last week reviewed the 103-page report by Witt O’Brien’s, a Washington, D.C.-based emergency management consulting firm. Consultants noted five “critical” recommendations among dozens of suggestions to strengthen the city’s ability to weather natural disasters.

Charlie Fisher, senior managing director for Witt O’Brien’s, told the council the fires were the worst disaster he had analyzed as a consultant for the firm. While crediting city leaders for not turning against each other during the review for improvements, Fisher was gentle but firm when delivering the report’s conclusions.

“I think there is a need for more focus on emergency management here in the city,” Fisher said. Though, he added, the city already has started to implement some of the suggestions.

Some of the city’s first steps will be hosting a drill for council members and coming up with a written policy to outline elected officials’ roles during disasters, said City Manager Sean McGlynn.

That exercise will follow council members’ concerns that they had to search for information and lacked clarity about their roles during disasters, according to Witt O’Brien’s findings.

Councilwoman Julie Combs said in her search for good information as the fires burned she tried to reach Fire Chief Tony Gossner. During the firestorm, Gossner and all of Santa Rosa’s other top Fire Department leaders were in the field.

That left a void of trained firefighting personnel in the city’s emergency operations hub, the consultants said. The city has since met one of the consultant’s recommendations by assigning a battalion chief to that role.

Witt O’Brien’s top findings for Santa Rosa, which paid up to $89,000 for the review, also included creating a formal emergency preparedness training policy for employees. The city’s emergency preparedness coordinator, Neil Bregman, is working with human resources staff members to craft a mandatory training policy by next January.

The city also should add fire weather to its list of triggers for activating its emergency operations center and consider whether a multi-government agreement with Sonoma County and other entities would improve disaster preparedness, the report said. City officials indicated they had updated their staffing strategies during fire weather and had purchased red flags to fly above city buildings during fire-prone conditions.

McGlynn also said the city was having conversations with other governments about creating a regional emergency preparedness entity and that he already had seen a first draft of such an arrangement from lawyers.

“I’m hopeful that you will see something around that this summer,” he said after Councilman Jack Tibbetts asked whether such a plan was moving out of the theoretical stage.

Another regional strategy the city and other government partners should continue is vegetation management, the report said.

Gossner said the city had a weed abatement program but no formal initiative to clear larger brush and trees to create safe empty space that could limit the spread of fire, particularly on Santa Rosa’s wooded outskirts.

He suggested the city could collaborate on a regional brush-clearing program with not only Sonoma County but Marin and Napa as well.

“You can be the most prepared as you can, but if nobody else is doing anything, it makes it very difficult under those very, very extreme conditions,” Gossner said. “It really does take a regional approach.”

Witt O’Brien’s also praised the attitude of city employees and residents, singling out police officers and firefighters who worked together to evacuate residents and protect buildings as the 2017 wildfires spread.

The report noted that city employees sometimes were pressed to do work without prior formal training and quickly came up with creative solutions.

“The overall attitude of the city employees is remarkable to me,” Fisher said.