After more reports were received and assignments given, “We’re overwhelmed,” Bobkiewicz acknowledged with a good-natured shrug. “Theoretically, we wouldn’t have enough people anyway,” as, noted Turner, city employees who live out of the area would probably be unable to reach Santa Paula.With communications out, city personnel were dispatched to check the school districts and Santa Paula Hospital. “We rely on alternate ways” to deal with components of an emergency, such as utilizing Amateur Radio Services (ARS), Ventura County’s volunteer ham radio operators, whom Bobkiewicz described as “so valuable.... We’re doing okay with staff communications, but not anything outside the city; that’s where they come in.”Reports that in an older area of the city 32 homes were destroyed and 56 others had major damage, that a major landslide had cut off Santa Paula from the north, and that a smell of gas was being reported throughout the city were all part of the exercise, which was followed by a debriefing.“I was just the fly on the wall making sure the prompts” of emergencies to be responded to were “delivered when they should be,” Lazenby said in a later interview. “Overall, I think it went well... it exposed some things we wanted to deal with, which is what we do the drills for. It went smoothly and it was good to test our capabilities and see what our needs are.”Lazenby noted that ARS, formally known as RACES, continues to be a key component to emergency response. “In a disaster we would be relying on them so heavily,” he added. “They are key to our contact with the outside world.”
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The Emergency Operating Center was activated at City Hall, and many city employees were pressed into duty they otherwise would not handle for the exercise overseen by Santa Paula Fire Captain Steve Lazenby, the city’s Emergency Response coordinator. (Photo by Brian D. Wilson) |
Santa Paula reacts to Great ShakeOut as part of state emergency exercise
November 26, 2008
Santa Paula News
By Peggy Kelly
Santa Paula TimesA massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit the San Andres Fault last week at just about 10 a.m. and Santa Paula had to react to the event, which toppled buildings, injured citizens and left city services disrupted. Against a backdrop of “news reports,” the Great ShakeOut of ‘08 offered communities throughout California the chance to test their preparedness skills for the big one or any other emergency of dramatic proportions.The Emergency Operating Center was activated at City Hall, and many city employees were pressed into duty they otherwise would not handle for the exercise overseen by Santa Paula Fire Captain Steve Lazenby, the city’s Emergency Response coordinator. “I’m not here,” noted Lazenby as he studied a Great ShakeOut manual and reports started to come in from throughout the city.City Manager Wally Bobkiewicz, the official incident commander, said he had just “sent someone over physically to United Water Conservation District” offices to get a report on the soundness of the Piru Dam. And Interim Public Works Director Jon Turner was garnering field reports on the condition of city infrastructure, including wells and water tanks.“We’re still doing an assessment of injured and damages,” noted Bobkiewicz as Teresa Young-Kiernan, a Building and Safety Department superintendent, studied maps of the city carved into color-coded zones for easy reference. Reports so far were that “20 buildings have minimum damage, 30 have major damage and eight are destroyed,” a count in one zone that Young-Kiernan said was derived from “just visual observation for rapid assessment.”Fire Chief Rick Araiza said the state’s satellite phone system was overwhelmed by the emergency, and electrical power was down throughout the entire Santa Clara River Valley. “The good news,” said Bobkiewicz, “is the dam is safe... and one good thing we’ve learned so far is we can’t use the satellite phone” to communicate with the state and/or county, which he blamed on either system overload or technical difficulties.Three Highway 126 overpasses suffered major damage, and Police Chief Steve MacKinnon said officers were placing barricades to divert traffic to the off ramps.
