10.25.05 - In the midst of major hurricanes and earthquakes damaging cities worldwide, the Sonoma City Council has decided to update its emergency-response plan and reactivate the city's disaster council to prepare for the event of a natural or manmade disaster.
The new disaster council - which is currently in the planning stages - "is basically a pre-disaster kind of a group," said City Manager Mike Fuson. "It's not who manages the disaster when it's happening. That's the emergency-response units and operations center, when it functions. The council is there to adopt and recommend plans, ordinances, regulations, things of that nature. It's essentially a planning group."
The panel would consist of the mayor, as chairman; the city manager as the director of emergency services; and the operating police or fire chief as the assistant director of emergency services.
Fire and police chiefs and the public works director would serve as chiefs of emergency services, and representatives of various civic, business, labor, veterans' and other groups having an official emergency responsibility would also be appointed with the advice and consent of the City Council.
In addition to planning for disasters, the panel would also handle the emergency-operations center, located within the Sonoma Police Department on First Street West.
"In the time that I've been here, there's never been an occurrence that required us to operate (the operations center), no large earthquakes, floods or storms of that nature," said Fuson.
However, the center, which is equipped with phone lines, maps, wall space (so as to keep track of events as they're happening), communications facilities and various other materials and support, is ready for operation in the case of an areawide disastrous event that would require operations beyond the local community's resources.
For example, if a major storm, earthquake, wild-land fire or manmade disaster were to occur, the incident commander (most likely Fuson) could open the operations center and be able to call in more resources starting with the county and moving upward from there.
"The issue is as an incident grows in size, it's something that's going to take more than what the emergency commanders, those folks in the field, could handle," said Fuson. "It might involve a number of city departments. It might take some centralized organization to be able to do the intelligence about what's going on, reporting that back in, seeking resources and making a formal request up the line if we needed outside assistance."
In addition to the emergency-operations center and the disaster panel, the city will review the updated emergency-response plan, which has been tweaked from the plan the city currently uses. The plan provides a legal framework for the city's disaster planning and disaster response activities.
Following the Standardized Emergency Management System, which was adopted by all cities in Sonoma County in 1995, the plan was "established to provide an effective response to multi-agency and multi-jurisdiction emergencies in California," and basically establishes an organizational plan for coordination on the city, regional, county and state levels.
A large part of the emergency plan therefore delineates authority and responsibility - or who is responsible for what actions. Each department is encouraged to make a more specific plan. So, for example, the police and fire departments have their own specific plans that detail their response to an emergency.
The Sonoma Valley Fire and Rescue Authority will now be responsible for the coordination of regular plan updates and training, while that responsibility was previously assigned to the police department.
Following the adoption of the updated plan and the reactivation of the disaster panel, the city will conduct practice exercises and begin a regular public-information effort.
"I'm concerned about the chaos factor. We need an established method to communicate with the public," said Mayor Larry Barnett at Thursday night's City Council meeting. "Should the city stockpile supplies like potable water and blankets and should the public know where to get them?" asked Barnett. He also worried that in the greater Bay Area, emergency response will mostly be directed to the largest populations, such as San Francisco or Santa Rosa.
"We might be left on our own for a while. I'm not counting on the county or the state's plans - at least for a few days," said Barnett.
The city, along with most formal emergency-response organizations, recommend that the public individually equip themselves to handle at least three days if a disaster were to strike - even if the city has an emergency plan and disaster panel.
The updated plan is up for adoption at the City Council's Dec. 7 meeting, following the staff review of the draft plan.
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