Disaster Council - Regular Meeting

Alright. We're gonna go ahead and call this meeting to order. This is the, first disaster council meeting of 2026. Today's date is 05/14/2026. It is now 01:02PM. I am lieutenant here representing the sheriff's office, and we'll go ahead with the roll call, and I'll have our other members here introduce themselves. Chief?

Hi. My name is Chris Landry. I am the operator coordinator for 2026. Chief Lillithall, last year's primary operator coordinator, is now the Legion coordinator. The alternate for the county is deputy chief Andrew Limos from El Norado County Fire.

Carla Hass, CAO's office on behalf and proxy for the CAO Sue Phillips, and I'm the county's chief communications officer and emergency liaison officer.

We have a chief Trinhon from selling time online.

I don't believe so. Chief Trinhon, are you there?

Alright. So nonattendance, we have chief Bren with the, city of Placerville and chief Jenner with, South Bay Tahoe PD. We'll go ahead and rise for the pledge allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, and liberty and justice for all. I.

Alright. I assume everybody has a copy of the agenda. This time, the council is making necessary additions, corrections to the agenda. Does anybody have anything they'd like to add or change?

Corrections.

K. So at this time, I'd like to make a motion to adopt the agenda. I can ask for a second.

Second.

And we'll vote on the agenda. I'll say aye. Aye. At this time, we're gonna have an open forum. The open forum is an opportunity for members of the public to address the council on subject matter that is not on their agenda or their meeting agenda. Public comments during open forum are limited to three minutes per person. Individuals authorized by organizations will have three minutes to present organizational positions and perspectives and may request additional time up to five minutes. The total amount of time reserved for open forum is twenty minutes. Is there anyone here that would like to make any comments? Alright.

And online, is there anyone here that would like to present? Alright. No way. Right. So we're gonna get to, our agenda here. The twenty five, twenty six winter season summary. So for our winter storm activations, we had one from June or excuse me, from February 19 to February 20. That was a level two activation and a level four activation from the twenty second to the twenty third. We had a heavy amount of rainfall in the lower elevations, quite a bit of snow upcountry. Winds contributed to a lot of downed trees, snow loads across our roadways.

We activated our EOC, PG and E, fire personnel throughout the county, DOT, the El Dorado County Sheriff's Office, El Dorado Hills Fire Assert team, and others assisted in creating some task force teams that went out there and cleared roadways and provided service to those PG and E lines that were down and out. We made a local proclamation that the was ratified, and that was about it for our winter season summary. We did have 8,648 customers without power countywide for a period of time. That's all I've got in regards to that. Do you have anything attributed to that?

Okay. Plan updates. Illinois County SAAR MOU update. Barry, do wanna

Yep. The Illinois County SAAR MOU, was reviewed, by law enforcement and fire departments, and it was resigned for the twenty twenty six year. The election piece application is currently going through the process. Illinois County has submitted that sub application for a grant update, the 2029 local application plan. The grant has currently or the application is currently cleared to CalES for review, and it's currently pending approval from FEMA. We should probably hear back during this fall to see if that grant is approved for the update. And

training updates. That'd be better.

Alright. So for training, the act of violence training for law enforcement and fire, is gonna be held between May of this month. The county will conduct a full scale active violence and rescue task force drill with law enforcement fire and EMS personnel. The exercise is designed to strengthen our coordination, our communication, and relationships among first responder support to unified response emergencies.

And evacuation drills?

So every year, we do two evacuation drills or town halls. For the West Stope this year, we did it April 18 in the Diamond Springs area. It was a two part drill, so we had a activation I'm sorry. Evacuation of Diamond Springs. We sent out the rate alert to that group. We had them respond to Union Mind High School as the temporary evacuation point, and that's where we held the town hall on evacuations. We had 81 residents in attendance who evacuated their homes. A lot of them brought trailers, did a rail evacuation, showed up for the town hall where we had 17 vendors and partners who presented to the community.

Alright. And in January, we had a multiagency wildfire active violence tabletop exercise here, that involved, several entities, US Forest Service, several buyer entities throughout the the, county, the sheriff's office, OESR, our patrol division, where we did tabletop exercise in regards to a wildland fire with an active shooter in the Kyber's area similar to what, I think, was Coeur D'Alene, Idaho experienced several years back and how our response would be to that, fighting that fire, in addition to isolating that threat with the, the active shooter, went pretty well. Regards to agency reports, move on here. We have a new fire liaison, captain Ryan Bennett. Matt Bellucci retired.

Matt, this is or excuse me. Ryan's first week. Go ahead and introduce yourself.

Bennett, owner of Hillspire, now with the the office. So, yes, I'm very happy to be here. I've met you most of

the year, so thank you for having

me. Alright. Our staff last week attended the CISA conference down in Southern California. So we missed a few events here in the community, but we are all back in action available. So what else do we have? Monthly meetings. In regards to monthly meetings, we've been to several public outreach events, project coordination meetings, fire safe councils. We're still involved in OWOPR, fire ops chiefs meetings, JPA, and TO meetings. And do you have anything, Tanya, to add to that maybe in regards to OWOPR at all?

Yeah. So the OES continues to have a seat on the wildfire resilient preparedness and resilience coordination group for the county and then also the project coordination group that Blake mentioned and also public outreach, which we have Shay on. And so OES is actively on all of the coordinating groups in the county for a while.

We've had multiple SAR trainings and deployments. We've been in continuous communication with neighboring agencies to increase our collaboration, in preparation for wildlife fire season and, attended and presented all fire state councils at the Eldorado Fire State Council meeting in addition to attending eight individual fire state council meetings. And we have nothing to report from South McDonald or. Chief Landry, do you have a higher operational area coordinator report?

Just a couple things that I mentioned before. The primary for this year, I'll get you, if anybody wants, chief Limos' number. We'll just start taking one week on week off for the, you

know, for the following

coordination. We completed the operator coordinators meeting for Region 4, I wanna say, two weeks ago. No major changes for the September wildland season. As it pertains to the county, most, if not all, fire agencies completed their RRC one thirty, their readiness for the wildland season. I expect their county to put up at least one strike team and multiple overhead positions should we rise. Other than that, nothing new to be mad unless you have any questions.

Well, there you are right there. Go back to Odette. Oahu report and Fire State Council report. Go ahead, Connie.

Tanya Harlow, wildfire resilience officer for the county in Oahu. Couple things. The c the community welfare protection plan, the CWPP, was updated when finalized and adopted by the board of supervisors, and so that is currently being implemented in the project coordination

group meetings.

So lots of work being done on the CWPP. And then, also, our office has been ready to publish a emergency preparedness handbook for the county. This was all the input contributors were local agencies from o e all the way from OES through All Fire, including PG and E and all information for all emergencies. Obviously, it's wildfire, but there's every natural kind of emergency that we could face and all the information that our county officials want the community to know. So that would be going out going to print at the end of this month and will be available starting in June. So we will be giving that to all agencies to hand out and, alright. So

Alright. Utility company report. Mike showed up just

in time. You guys I've made. You guys are wasting any time. Good afternoon, everybody. Mike Webb, public safety specialist with PG and E.

I work in El Dorado County, Sacramento County, and now recently first year in Yolo County. So I service all of the respective first responder agencies, fire law, and OES in those counties as the primary point of contact for PG and E. So, with that being said, man, our our effort to continue that high level of cooperation and coordination, you know, that that drum is just beating louder and and more often than it has for years. So I I feel like we're being really successful in this space. So some of the things that have, recently occurred here, without going too far into our wildfire safety program with with the by about the end.

We've had some really successful training programs this spring with, some of our local first responder agency, the sheriff's department being one of them. We provided our first responder workshop training for, all of your patrol staff essentially, for the the, the sheriff's department. We also had sessions, with our El Dorado Hills Fire Department and Georgetown Divide Fire Academy. Just to name a few, we, we did host a pretty good storm event this winter. We we did engage in here with OES, and, you know, that was, you know, lighter than some of the storms we had experienced in the past, but we you know, that relationship and that responses, you know, remains really, really key to success and supporting the community during those storm events.

Moving forward in the fire season, you know, I'll I'll just announce today. Right now, we are starting to plan for a public safety power shutoff because of the north wind event that is anticipated to hit the area, by late weekend. So we are standing up our EOC today. We'll start putting up messaging and notifications, which have already been made at these agencies here. For planning, I I I'm just gonna say I wouldn't anticipate us being a part of the scope of this event just based on the fire fuels and their availability to burn right now, and that impact of risk is pretty low here for that type of event.

But, that is one of our big wildfire, reduction processes. It's actually, like, the last process when everything else is, not able to meet the risk reduction needs. So we'll talk about the the community wildfire safety program a little bit. So we we are, El Dorado County is number one in the service territory for, mileages of wires that have been placed underground. I'm sorry.

I don't have the stats for me in front of me, but it's compared to the rest of the counties in service area, it's pretty, pretty profound what we're doing here. I know, those impacts aren't always easy on our communities, and I just I just gotta remind everybody it's just some short term pay for long term gain for safety. And that goes with, you know, the vegetation issues we've dealt with over the years and now some of the underground and just those impacts on roads and traffic control and people coming on your property and all those things. So I just I just ask, you know, especially in light of our recent incidents here, it's just people continue to be patient. Let us do the work.

It's gonna pay off. Our wildfire, risk has been reduced by, like, 97% in the last five years since I started this job with all the initiatives that we put out on the table, and that that includes underground and vegetation work, the enhanced power line safety settings, which is the, the small outages we get in the summer months when something impacts the wires, the system shuts off before it puts a spark on the ground, and then also the public safety power shutoff. So those initiatives are all creating a suite of what we call our layers of protection. It's working. It is reducing risk, you know, those strategies are continuing to build and play out, for us.

So, the last thing, I think I was really excited. We did a bunch of grants recently. I think the one I just wanna talk about was the the, watch duty grant. We got the free watch duty licenses for any of the fire departments of the county that wanted them. We provided those licenses free of charge, and they get the professional grade watch duty. And so if there's any other agencies that would like to jump in or jump on that grant, we'll happily continue to support that. We feel that that information and that situational awareness for you guys is gonna be more important. So, so we are continuing to work on that. So, like I said, I I'm in the posture right now. Like, this is what kind of my shoulder season, before we get busy.

So kind of putting the training and all the regulatory work that I do through the wintertime and now kinda being more available to to respond to wildfires. So that's kind of the posture we're in this utility that I'm in right now. As far as any other big issues, I haven't been made aware of any or anything that's cooking out there that maybe we need to talk about otherwise, but I'm I'm I'm here and available to group if there's any questions.

I'm here. Can

I just add a comment to for PG and E? So, actually, would I just got back this morning from the PG and E's wildfire or the utility wildfire mitigation conference, and Ken and I were asked to be on a panel. And so what we did was because PG and E is doing such good work here in Eldorado County and giving us a lot of money, they are doing not only the undergrounding work, but they're awarding micro grants to fire safe councils for work that they want done around their communities. Garden Valley Fire has gotten a lot of assist from PG and E out in the North or in the Divide area. So PG and E is doing a lot of really good work that probably is not being, showcased enough, but we will make sure that we're working on that as far as our public and letting them know, all the work that PG and E is doing.

And, so and that's kind of on behalf of the Fire State participants too.

I hope that conference was fruitful. I I you know, the leaders probably wanted to be involved with that, so I did not be able to participate. But, but yeah. So I I I'll I'll talk about that relationship a little bit because that's been really key over the last few years. Working with the well organized group of people here in Colorado County that between FireSafe, the OWOPR, the conservation districts, and Garden Valley.

You know, these other engaged fire agencies, we have been able to build and make what we call a business case. There is a return on investment on PG and E doing wildfire resilience work in and around our power line infrastructure. That's what I'm talking about. Not just talking about clearing our lines, but the communities around them. Right?

The community. They they, you know, not only from the risk of an addition of a fire from our equipment, but the exposure of our equipment from a wildfire. So that that business model, that business came came right out of working with Tanya and Ken and Mark out the the Resource Conservation District and just having this great conversation. Like, where does our risk overlap? We all have a piece of this this game and really make it a clear case and working with a really, I would say, pretty brilliant guy from PG and E that was able to take all that and and build this business case.

And and it it's actually becoming a nationwide standard and the best practice of utilities across the nation, what we're doing right here in El Dorado County. So, and so I I I know that's growing, and I know there's more coming. And I know they wanna continue to push and test and and validate that here in El Dorado County. So I'm excited about that to be a part of that. So thank you for being our Yeah.

Partner. So You. It's good.

Since we're on the utility updates, it looks like Matt Newberry from Liberty just signed on. Matt, can you hear us? Yes.

I can. Thanks for calling us out. I I'm standing in today for John Naulder and Scott Witt, the two leads on our program that are actually at the the same conference. I don't have any direct updates beyond the fact that we are, you know, taking on most of the same strategic planning that PG and E calls out. In specific, we will be having a PSPS desktop exercise on June 25, sending those invite invitations out to the folks that are impacted there.

And I imagine that John and Scott will be on the next the next check-in from this group. So if you have any questions, I'm glad to see if I can field them or forward them back over to the core team in due time.

Great. Thank you, Matt. In addition, we had Chief Drinen who logged on. Chief, can you, hear me?

Yeah. Good afternoon. Jim Brennan from City South Lake Tahoe. Not a whole lot to report. We had a fairly mild winter, so there weren't a whole lot of events for us either. Just on our end, we got super busy back filling Lake Valley's power stations last week for about ten days. I just wanna give a a loud thank you to EDSO and the West Oak Fire Agencies, both county and Hills came up and did a bunch of help with us. The whole XTV in the basin was really, really helpful. So thank you for that. Otherwise, not much else to report. We're just looking forward to the fire season with, some concern.

Thank you, chief.

Can I ask my question?

Go ahead.

Okay. Back to what you were saying, Mike. You talked about the watch duty grants. Mhmm. I assume that we in El Dorado County took advantage of that program. So we have

Most agencies. Yes.

Agencies. And can you explain when you say 97% El Dorado risk, can you give me some clarity, some color to what that means and So what it used to be? What did it used to be? And what is it now?

Well, I because what I can tell you is that the ignitions from wild utility equipment infrastructure since 2020 since we started what we would call those layers of protection, which were very basic back then. It was just vegetation management. The ignition, or, excuse me, the enhanced power and safety settings, the hardening, which was the improvement of the system. So what we have seen are emissions from utility equipment in those five years reduced by 97%.

Reduced by 97%. Correct.

Okay. Thank you. Statewide or here?

Just territory. Been the whole PG and E service territory. Okay.

Not just other Route County, but the whole Just

the whole Okay.

Thank you.

Alright. Moving on to announcements. Would any council members like to share any relevant announcements?

Need to share?

Probably.

We have anything? Alright. Our next meeting is gonna be November 12 at thirteen hundred hours. We're at the Eldorado County Sheriff's Office meeting, your honor. And if nobody has anything else, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you all for attending online and personal. We'll see you in a little bit.

Thanks, Jen. Few minutes or

you can I have some time off? Great. Yeah. Like, for this