Disaster Council - Regular Meeting

I'm not doing that speech again. So, alright. We're we're gonna call meeting to order. So we're gonna do roll call of the gist of the council meeting our members. So I'll start with myself. I am deputy Mokia. I am representing the sheriff today as the sheriff's office as the emergency manager. Should we Michael? Michael. Sorry.

Yep. Hey. Michael here representing the operator coordinator.

Thank you. Representing the CEO's office?

Sure. Sue Phillips, interim chief administrative officer.

Alright. And then not present on the council right now. They are not present. Correct? They're not online?

No.

So is for the city of Placerville is chief Joe Wren. And then for the city of South Lake Tahoe is chief Jim Drennett. Alright. So did somebody speak?

Okay.

Alright. Now it's on the agenda. We need to roll out the leg of allegiance. Thank you. Am starting this out? Yep. I pledge allegiance.

Led of

allegiance to the flag

of The United States.

And to do the republic, which is saying

Witch is saying. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty of justice for all.

Alright. Thank you. Alright. So, we're gonna need to adopt the agenda. Hopefully, you all found a copy when you walked in or got an email to you. Before we, adopt the agenda, though, I do have one amendment. The the proposed amendment would be to, change the Georgetown Wood Pork Shop, reference in the agenda under twenty five nineteen forty seven. Twenty five nineteen forty seven. It's, inaccurately represents the Georgetown evacuation drill as in 2026. It was actually already completed in 2025.

So that is the only agenda amendment. Are there any council members that wish to make additions or changes to the agenda?

No. But, Moki, I'll motion to adopt the agenda as you amended it.

Thank you for that, chief. Do we have a second?

Second.

Thank you, CEO. We will we will now vote. All in favor of adopting the agenda?

Aye. Aye. Aye.

Hey. Moki Jim Drennan is on now. Chief Drennan is.

Oh, chief Drennan, sorry. I did not see that you joined. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Yeah. Chief Drennan from Southwind. Alright. I was running a little bit late. Lunch ran long.

No. We're just happy you joined. Alright. So we are adopting the agenda. Chief, did you have anything you want to change around the agenda?

I do not.

Okay. So there's already been a motion in a second for adoption of the agenda. We'll we'll start the vote again. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Any nays? Alright. Hearing none, the motion carries. Alright. So now, we're gonna go to open forum. Open forum is an opportunity for members of the public to address the council on subject matter that is not on the meeting agenda. Public comment during open forum are limited to three minutes per person. Individuals authorized by an organization 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. Any public comment? Seeing none in the room. Any online?

None online.

Alright. No no hands raised online. So we will close open form and move on to discussion items. So item 25 dash one nine four five, 2025 summer season summary.

So, my name is Matt Bellecchi. I'm the, fire service coordinator liaison for the, OES office. I work with the other way in those fire department, and I am a, a team member here in the office. That being said, for the 2025 summer season summary, for the most part, relatively quiet, nice and tame this year, which is good. We had, two EOC activations.

I believe they're level four in. Is that right? And one was for the, June bonanza, wildland fire that occurred and also the April I mean, August 26 County fire that happened in South County. We also had multiple, local government and overhead strike teams and deployments, throughout the state of California as well. We've had plenty of multi agency collaborative training mostly on wildland fire, but we also did, several through with local fire agencies and sheriff's department, including the helicopter for water rescue trainings. And And that's all I have for 1945.

Thank you, Catherine. So, moving to the next item, five-nineteen forty six, plan updates. Can we get a CWPP status update?

Hi. Tanya Harlow, office of wildfire preparedness and resilience. We have spent the last year updating the, 2022 community welfare protection plan. That update is just about complete. We're doing a couple final touches on it, and it should be sent out for signature in the next two weeks and will be adopted by the board, in February February.

Thank you. Alright. Evacuation plan update. So, the Wests, the Westslope plan is, the draft copy is complete and is, being, giving its final review. Once that is complete, we are going to plan a 30 comment period.

Sorry about that. We're we'll we'll we'll mute that party. Alright. The top Tahoe Basin plan, that was already adopted. Right? Yes. Alright. Moving on to the next one. Eldorado County search and rescue, memorandum of understanding completion. Yep.

The MOU has been signed. The sheriff had the final sign off on it, and he signed that five or six months ago. It's in effect, and it's been ratified, all agencies have received it. And a report with that?

Alrighty. Next agenda item, 25 dash one nine four seven, training updates. For the active shooter violence training we've done in the last couple of months,

it was a huge success. We had over a 140, well, including, additional law enforcement, close to a 160 people who joined the active shooter, active violence training. The El County Sheriff's Department put on, two trains with, the invited fire. We had a good turnout with that as well. It's very productive.

They talked about rescue task force, instant command structure, and tactics. In addition to that, the Eldorado County Fire, Training Officer Association put an additional, three trainings on for fire service personnel. We had some law enforcement scattered in there, in between as well. Couple years ago, chief and chief Gallagher, put together and they got a Department of Homeland Security grant. They decided to go ahead and look what's best for the, the county at the time, and they went with the active shooter route, and they went with the ballistics, personal protective equipment.

And the ultimate goal was to get everybody first line engines and chief officers outfitted with, ballistics gear. We had to adjust some of that just be based on costs and increase of, pricing and everything. So most first out engines and some chief officers in the county, including Tahoe, would now have, ballistics gear, again, helmet plates, and some other, EMS bags. I also wanna thank the the JPA, Christie Jordansson, for, helping, purchase the, RTF bags and the iFAQ bags through their budget, which was, very, very helpful. We are also looking to put another drill in the '26, be hosted by the sheriff's department.

For deeper understanding of the group in which in your report, can you clarify RTF and ITAC?

Yeah. The the RTF stands for rescue task force. It's a combination of, law enforcement, security, and firefighters who form a diamond shaped, huddle and a well coordinated procedure that if an active violence or active shooter does occur, let's say, at a at a theater or a school or wherever it's at, they can, coordinate an effect, go in and find and secure victims and bring them out to the, awaiting medical folks as well. And but the RTF and rescue task force is where they go into the warm zone together with fire and law, and they do some rescue stuff, and then they essentially save lives and stop the bleed. The RTF bag is a medical bag that the RTF uses that has all of the, what we call stop the bleed advantages and everything that we use as paramedics and EMTs in the field to stop the bleed just so we can, reduce the loss of life.

And then we have certain carrying devices also, which were part of the grand called foxtrot litters that assist us in getting the folks out instead of the old school just pick them up and carry them. These devices are actually very helpful. They're very ergonomic, and they're fast, and then they deploy pretty quick. The iFAT that, Monkey was talking about is an individual first aid kit. It's kind of a, another name for it, and that's for the rescuer themselves have a bag on them, and that bag contains medical supplies only for them. So if for something were to happen to a rescuer, let's say they get shot or an explosion or something, there's extra, tourniquets, extra quick cloth dressings, extra Israeli bandages, stuff that's only made for me, and that's all.

Yeah.

That's my back is TF. Any questions about the terminology? Okay. Thank you. Thank you, captain.

So at the end of your report? End of your report. But

yeah. Mhmm.

Alright. Evacuation drills?

I will speak to that. My name is Shay Schmidt. I'm the emergency services coordinator here in OAS.

Katie, where you are?

So we attempt to do two evacuation drills, town halls every year, frying both West Slope and the Tahoe Basin as much as we can. In 2025, we did a full scale evacuation drill and town hall for the Lake Hills area in El Dorado Hills. And a that was very well attended. It was a great turnout. And then we also did a town hall.

No evacuation drill, but just a town hall only for Georgetown, also well attended. Additionally, we did a small town hall in South Lake Tahoe for 2025. And then pending for 2026 sometime in spring, April or May is tentative dates. We'll be doing a full scale evacuation drill and town hall for diamond sprays.

Thank

you. So moving on to agenda item 25 dash one nine four eight, EDSO and OES report. So I'll start off with this one. We've had staff developed through, throughout the state, meaning that we've had three of our staff members deploy, oh, I said developed. So deployed on various incidents throughout 2025 on on on margins.

We've also been increasing the staff. We've added some new collateral deputies to our, program, our OAS program here at sheriff's office. So they are in training now, but, we are making sure that our staffing level stays up so we have, trained and experienced staff. Staff attended emergency management conferences this year, so both, state and international and, brought back, excellent information from those conferences. There's been ongoing and continuous training for the OES staff, both, attended and, put on on some in some instances.

We've had, monthly meetings, public outreach, project coordination, fire safe council, OWOPR, fire ops chief meetings, JPA, and the training officer group meetings that we attend regularly. We also are doing ongoing and continuous search and rescue training for our volunteers and our coordinators.

Continuing on the report for ZSO, this season, we've sent out two alert morning evacuation events during the wildfire season, both order and warning, having people leave their residence or shelter or get prepared to leave. We also did our first annual countywide emergency alert test that was sent out to the entire population to test our system, and that's something we will be doing on a yearly basis now. We are looking to upgrade our perimeter software. So we have perimetermap.com. It's a software we use for the public to go to to see real time emergencies.

It's also how we draw out the actual emergency to send the alert. There's new updates available for live traffic and weather simulation so that we can see how long it would take somebody to evacuate based on traffic patterns, weather, the trajectory of the fire. So that's being made available to us at a reasonable price for being one of the first companies or one of the first counties to join Perimeter Map. The California Senate Bill SB seven ninety four, section eight five nine three point four is a bill that is requiring utility companies for us, specifically PG and E and Liberty, to produce the data for our residents for emergency alert purposes only. This would change our emergency alerting system from an opt in system where people have to sign up to receive it to a complete opt out system where we have the data.

We can send a message to us to see if they would like to opt out. Otherwise, we have the data for everybody in our entire county in in our entire county in the case of emergency. That's all I have.

Okay. We've, we've had continuous communication with neighboring agencies to increase the collaboration, whether it's in meetings, whether it's on calls, whether it's up at the county level, or if it's going on having lunch to make sure we're on the same page and trainings are all on the same page of additional counties. We're having, some certain trainings that are hard to find. We're definitely these relationships ahead of time to make sure that we're all on the same page and we have equal opportunity to get these trainings because one thing you wanna have is the good relationships built with neighboring agencies and internal folks so that when the EOC is activated, the relationships are built prior to rather than the day of or during that emergency. So the continuous communication has been going very well.

This office has also attended, over 10 separate fire safe councils on on the evenings throughout the year. So we're trying to keep our, relationship with the fire safe councils locally, to at a at a at a high bar, and so far, it seems to be working out pretty good. So that's all I have for the, report.

Alright. That's the end of I

didn't know if on this section if it could be individual things that we're covering for questions. Sure. Sure. Okay. I have a question on the perimeter map. Yeah. So you talked about evacuations. So that is real time current evacuations status view when Correct. So when there's an event in progress? Yeah.

So perimetermap.com is always live. So right now, we are not experiencing an emergency. There's nothing on it except for our sandbag locations. Those are the only it'll show you your zone and then just those two. As an emergency comes out, if it's say it's a a wildfire that and Matt's out in the field.

He can pull up perimeter map, draw out the actual perimeter, send it to us in in the office. As soon as I push publish, anybody who goes to perimetermapcom can see that live. That's a low bandwidth website, so that people up in or where, you know, all over the county can have live access to what is happening real time. As we expand the zone, say, from a warning to a order, you have to go now. It's it's instantly live as soon as we click it live. It also shows evacuation routes where shelters are temporary temporary shelters or long term shelters, animal shelters. All of that is is as live as it is to us than it

is to the public. Right. So on the evacuation routes themselves, it it is is it is it gonna show congestion in an area, or is it a model where it's gonna say, we're assuming that everybody's leaving, and this is what it looks like.

Internal side, it will be a model. Okay. It will not be live live a view of actual traffic congestion. Sure. Okay. Okay.

Thank you. I did speak to the, perimeter folks just a couple weeks ago at a conference. They are working on that right now because they want live data from the end user to see what the current congestion points are Mhmm. And the choke points, so to speak, during an evacuation. So they're they're working on that right now, they're are making that a priority

Right.

In addition to also, having, the if they're working with NOAA on the weather side to see what kind of weather impacts are gonna impact the community as well, the end user looking at it as well. Right. So yeah.

Mostly because I'm very interested in in our safety element last year. We updated the requirement for evacuation models. And so far, I don't think that we have any, so I find it very interesting that perimeter maps potentially gonna be able to at least provide some of that. It it would be nice to have it for plan generally. I but but that's a cool update. You.

Alright. City of South Lake Tahoe, do you have a report?

Sure. Sorry. So for 2025, pretty busy. In the last few months, definitely pretty busy. We've, we've got our we've established our South Shore Fuel division, which is a, joint effort between us and Lake Valley.

We partner with the California Tahoe Conservancy, Cal Fire Forest Service, Tahoe Regional Conservation District. And that concept is basically coordinating all fuels management regardless of jurisdictional line. The reason I bring that up is on the heels of the evacuation comment. For the first time, we've actually been able to go into partnership with Caltrans, which has been somewhat problematic for us in the past where we're able to we're we will start working on fuels projects specifically along the evacuation routes, 89 North out of Southlake as well as Highway 50 and Highway 88. That's kind of a a big success that are in their cap to get that handled.

We've been doing a ton of, you know, various projects around South Shore for school districts, for foresters, Cal Fire, local gov, etcetera. But a high priority for me up here is we have a very limited mechanism for evacuation. We we're not gonna grow our roads. We're not gonna increase the number of roads, and the number of people that visit Tahoe, far surpasses our ability to remove them all at the same time. So, that's not a big deal.

Otherwise, more internally, I was able to establish a deputy chief position for the fire department. So Carl Kaplan was recently promoted up to deputy chief, which takes a load off of my plate. We're looking forward to the winter, and we have had no snow, as you're aware, which is a bummer, but looking forward to hopefully busy soon. And, otherwise, kind of business as usual. Any questions for me?

Thanks, chief. Chief Rand has not joined. Correct?

Just double checking.

Or designee, I should say. Alright. Anybody on from city of Placerville has a report? I'm hearing none. Fire operator coordinator report. Chief, Lily and Paul?

Yeah. So hello, everybody. Thanks for letting me join in. From the fire operational area coordinator section, not a lot. Last year was was a good year. We we did well. We did we did sorry about that. Phone's on. We did send some resources out on deployment statewide, but it wasn't as high a volume as we've seen in the past, so that was good news. And things went pretty well there. I think probably the biggest change for the Op area as we move into wintertime, we'll be looking for the opportunities for state funded prepositions. So we're always watching the weather when we qualify for state funding to add extra fire resources. We do that. So we'll be watching that going through this at least this winter season if we start getting some rain, that is. Right now, obviously, things are are pretty quiet.

Looking further into next year, I think succession planning is the next big topic for us. We've got a number of retirements with chief Cordero expected to retire next year. Chief Lohan just retired. Those were two of our operating coordinators. So we do have chief Landry joining in, and then we're looking at El Dorado County fire. They're gonna designate somebody that's gonna come in and learn the op area coordinator role. I'm gonna start working at the region level as an alternate for the region four operational area coordinator jobs. So that'd be something I'll be learning next year, but I'll probably maintain the primary role for El Dorado County at least through this next year while we train up people behind to kinda take over for the long term future. And with that, that's the

end of report.

Thank you, chief. Alright. OWA report.

Hi. So probably the most significant part of OWA, what we've done this year is, we stood up the project coordination working group, and that is including all of the agencies and partners involved in wildfire mitigation. So that's including local fire, Cal Fire, and even federal level fire. And then we've also have all stakeholders, so utilities, landowners. Caltrans has tied in with us also just recently, and we they are giving us all of their data.

So what's significant about this group is one of our primary objectives is make sure that we're doing plan alignment. As we know, there's all these plans that are being done. The timing has kind of worked out really perfectly right now because plans have are getting updated at the same time. And so we are aligning the general plan safety element, the wildfire strategy, all the evacuation plans that are happening, the CWPP, the CAL FIRE unit plan even, and then we're using all of those plans to make sure that we're making really informed decisions with our projects. All not just all the way from landscape level projects, so fuel reduction, fuel breaks all the way down to parcel level projects, meaning defensible space, home hardening, and all of that.

So it's a very coordinated effort with anybody who has a stake in wildfire mitigation, and it's it's just it's going very well. So and then also, we will be the data hub. And so we're in the process of collecting data for from every agency and partner and hopefully having that data housed at the county so that we can also then make very informed decisions with all the

data that everyone has. End of report.

Thank you. Alright. Anybody from Fire City Council saw it? I'm hearing none. Any representative of, PG and E or Liberty as a report?

Alright. Hearing none. Alright. That's the end of the agendized items. I, there's no any public comment on any, discussion items.

Alright. Seeing no public comment in the room or online, we're gonna move to announcements. Would any council members like to share any relevant announcements?

Nothing for me.

Chief Ryan, you got anything? Nope. Alright. Sheriff's office does not have anything either. Alright. So that's the end of the announcements. So the next meeting date is scheduled, for May 14 at thirteen hundred hours. Details will come in the future, but likely to be here in this room as well. So that's the end of our agenda. If there was no nothing I missed, then I just need a motion to adjourn.

Go ahead. Second.

Go ahead. Second? Yep. I I think I think chief Limerfield muted himself. Alright. All in favor of adjournment?

Aye. Aye.

Alright. We are adjourned. Thank you.

Morning, Scott.