City to update disaster plan

Earthquakes and other calamities are bad enough without the ensuing chaos – and while Sonoma may not be able to prevent the former, it’s doing its best to prevent the latter.
“Usually, I meet you all when your hair’s on fire,” said American Red Cross volunteer John Saguto, who helped coordinate part of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina relief effort. “If we get nothing done today other than learning each other’s names, that’ll be enough.”
Saguto is one of the members of the newly formed Sonoma Disaster Council, which held its first meeting on May 8. The council includes over 20 representatives from the usual civic disaster-relief agencies – fire, police, hospital and public works – as well as local schools and service organizations. Sonoma City Manager (and Director of Emergency Services) Linda Kelly echoed Saguto’s sentiments.
“As we know, we all need to have mutually supportive relationships in advance so we know who to call,” Kelly told the assembly.
Sonoma’s Municipal Code defines the council’s responsibility as “the development of the city emergency plan … for the effective mobilization of all the resources of this city, both public and private, to meet any condition [of] emergency.”
But the city disaster plan hadn’t been updated since 2001, and Kelly – who worked on a similar effort in her last position, as Fairfax’s city manager – is making that a top concern.
“Disasters give us no warning,” Kelly said in an interview Friday. “I first started with assessing our state of readiness by asking all staff what has been done here recently in terms of disaster preparedness.”
What she found wasn’t much ­– no recent training for staff, no community outreach or awareness – but she wasn’t discouraged.
“Nothing surprised me,” she said. “I came to the conclusion that there were many things we could do, both on the staff level and in the community to enhance our preparedness… Just by better coordination and collaboration and information sharing, that’s half the battle.”
The battle’s other half lies with informing the public, both before and after an emergency, how best to maximize their survival. Conventional wisdom holds that every home be equipped with enough food and water to last for three days. But several representatives – notably Jackie Lyons, Sonoma Valley Hospital’s Emergency Management Coordinator – suggested that in the event of a major earthquake or fire, it could be four days to a week before help could arrive. Former Sonoma mayor Ken McTaggart, who coordinates Sonoma Valley ham-radio communication for the county Office of Emergency Services, said disaster planners should be “brutally honest” in telling the public what they can and can’t expect.
“The government is not going to save you,” he said.
The Sonoma Disaster Council plans to meet monthly until November, and quarterly after that. Its next meeting will be June 4.