PD Editorial: Don’t dismiss emergency planning audit

A few days have passed since the state auditor released a report critical of Sonoma County's disaster preparedness planning. We hope it was a cooling off period for local officials whose immediate response was to push back rather than take the report's recommendation in the constructive spirit they were intended.

The audit looked at Sonoma County's plans to help its most vulnerable residents before the 2017 fires and what steps have been taken since. Vulnerable residents include those with functional needs such as people with limited English (10% of county residents), 65 years and older (17%) or with a disability (12%). The audit did similar analyses of the Thomas fire in Ventura County in 2017 and the Camp fire in Butte County in 2018.

The findings weren't great for Sonoma County. The auditor found that the county lacked adequate plans to deal with a major catastrophe and evacuations. That was evident in the deaths that occurred in the fire and criticism at the time of failures to warn people that a major fire was approaching neighborhoods.

David Rabbitt, the chairman of the Board of Supervisors, was having none of it, though. “How helpful is it to reiterate the things that could have gone better in 2017 and bash us for it, versus looking at the plan we have today to be better in 2020?” he asked Staff Writer Julie Johnson.

Perhaps not super helpful, but neither is getting one's hackles up when the state auditor conducts an impartial review intended to help everyone understand what happened and to recommend improvements. The county has already made big strides, but the auditor found that in a lot of ways it's still coming up short. For example, the audit notes that officials haven't made advance arrangements to acquire key sheltering resources like accessible cots.

Primarily, the auditor urges the county to meet best planning practices established by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That shouldn't be controversial, but the county's emergency manager put up a fair bit of resistance to even to something as simple as maintaining documentation of meetings with advocacy groups.

It's not all on the county, though. Auditors concluded the state should do a lot more to help. Better funding, planning guidance and more would all benefit counties trying to adopt solid plans for an emergency. That's especially true for rural counties that lack resources and also are more prone to wildfires.

One example from the audit is particularly illustrative of the failure to think things through. The California Office of Emergency Services this year finally provided templates for emergency notifications in 17 non-English languages, but it didn't include a translation guide. Unless someone on county staff knew how to read Chinese or Armenian, using them is a gamble. What if someone sent the shelter-in-place message instead of the evacuation one?

This shouldn't be so hard. California has seen a rash wildfires and other disasters in recent years. We're likely to see more in the future. The auditor's report provides helpful recommendations for counties and the state to prepare. That's neither harsh critique, unfair lingering on past mistakes nor unreasonable request. It's constructive criticism worth pursuing.

You can send a letter to the editor at letters@pressdemocrat.com.