DISASTER PREPAREDNESS
PHOTO: COURTESY OF JASON SIRNEY
City of Sacramento Office of Emergency Services command center.
“ We gather information and individuals needed to make strategic decisions to fix problems quickly,” says Sirney.“ We evaluate situational intelligence, including information from in-field responders, media, social media and technology, such as aerial imagery.”
The City of Sacramento OES office acts as a conduit between the state and federal disaster response. Efficiently restoring communities to their pre-disaster state requires widespread communication from first responders on the ground, telecommunications and utility companies, and all levels of government.
“ Our toolbox has multiple communications tools,” says Sirney.“ We communicate to the media, via social media and the telephone, and we can even have police officers with car loud speakers or staff knocking on doors if needed.”
COMMUNICATIONS CHALLENGES The 2017 Santa Rosa wildfires demonstrated the communications challenges among agencies, first responders and citizens in emergency situations. Many residents have given up landlines, so the government often lacks contact information to warn citizens of disaster. Officials recommend that residents manually add their information to the emergency alert database at Sacramento-Alert. org.
Adding to the challenges, there are discrepancies in the ranking of emergencies between organizations. Within the structure of the Sacramento County EOC, three levels of emergencies exist, ranging from a low level-one threat to the highest level-three threat, which differs from the federal system in which the scale of the emergencies are reversed.
“ The difference between the levels is scale,” says Stephen Cantelme, chief of emergency services at the Sacramento County OES.“ If we were in a level three crisis we may have 125 people working in our EOC.”
Cantelme says the highest level of recent emergency was the flooding in January and February of 2017.“ That was a low level two,” says Cantelme.“ We ranged from three to 35 people working in our EOC.”
Jeff Briggs is SMUD’ s emergency preparedness manager. His job is to oversee SMUD’ s disaster response readiness, both internally and externally. SMUD coordinates response activities through its own EOC.
Where power outages are identified, SMUD sends automated, pre-recorded calls to impacted customers on their primary number on file, with estimated restoration time. SMUD is also working on text and email notifications, which could be operational within the next year.
“ Liaisons from other organizations come into our EOC if it’ s a power emergency. If it’ s a community disaster, we send representation to the county EOC,” says Briggs.
Specialists from a variety of sectors must come together and collaborate during emergencies. Agencies train staff with techniques to ensure a smooth collaboration.
“ Part of our training involves using an‘ emergency language’ that all parties understand,” says Mary Jo Flynn-Nevins, an emergency operations coordinator for Sacramento County.“ While each organization has discipline-specific language, we speak a common, easy-to-understand language in the EOC, allowing us to react quickly.”
Cantelme says this means everyone in the EOC avoids using acronyms and states information as simply as possible.
GET READY Catastrophic events such as hurricanes, earthquakes or cyber attacks have the potential to disrupt communications systems. The Sacramento County OES recommends each family have one designated point of contact, outside of the affected area, who has a phone tree established in advance to deliver updates.
“ Communication can be a major choke point during emergencies,” says
68 comstocksmag. com | January 2018