Apocalypse When? How Santa Cruz County is preparing for the next disaster

About six weeks ago, scientists discovered a previously unknown asteroid, estimated to be about roughly the size of a 15-story building. That’s not the scary part. This is: The asteroid’s projected trajectory gives it a slim chance to strike the Earth some time in December of 2032. How slim? The odds are about 1 in 83.

As front-of-mind worries go, an asteroid strike nearly eight years from now has to rank pretty low. And that probability percentage of 1.3% is not only small, but could get even smaller as time goes on. But the odds of a tornado touching down in Scotts Valley were probably just as reassuring, until it happened.  

The point is no one among us can predict what potential calamities are ahead. All we can do is play in the sandbox of probabilities … and, taking into account those probabilities, prepare for any reasonable eventuality.

Disaster preparedness is built in concentric circles, from the home to the neighborhood to the city/county, and beyond. That means the question “Are you prepared?” is different than “Are we prepared?” The former is a question of personal responsibility, of taking the necessary steps to allow evacuation, to minimize loss and to safeguard your family. But that second question has to do with government, and the ability of public officials and agencies to anticipate the logistics and mitigation measures that a crisis will demand. 

Preparedness is also a what-if game. The uncertainty is baked in. In Santa Cruz County, an asteroid strike isn’t necessarily a consuming concern, largely because it is crowded out by so many others — fire, earthquake, atmospheric rivers, floods, landslides — that are less “if” questions than “when” questions. The devastating CZU fires of 2020 and the crippling flooding of 2023 have left behind lessons for similar disasters sure to come. The Los Angeles fires and the Moss Landing incident remind us that such events can happen at any time and quickly, and that they are still capable of surprising us.

The age of OR3

The heartbeat of Santa Cruz County’s emergency preparedness resides on the second floor of the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office building in Live Oak, in plain view of commuters on Highway 1. It’s called the Office of Response, Recovery & Resilience, or “OR3.” 

OR3 is a relatively new thing. It was formed in late 2020, in the wake of CZU, the worst natural disaster locally since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The idea was to bureaucratically reorganize the already existing Office of Emergency Response with other efforts to rebuild post-disaster and to anticipate long-term planning for climate change.

 Under the rubric of that first “R,” Response, the job at OR3 has to do with a couple of C’s: communication and coordination. OR3’s job is to activate the networks of coordination among a wide range of different entities in law enforcement and emergency services. Decision-making authority depends largely on the nature of the disaster and what needs to be done. The sheriff’s office, for instance, is the decision-maker when it comes to the when, where and how of evacuations. The unit chief of Cal Fire makes the calls on monitoring wildfires. The challenge at OR3 is to help the various agencies involved get the information and the material that they need from each other without creating chain-of-command bottlenecks.

The office’s director, and its first employee hired in the winter of 2021, is Dave Reid, a veteran county staffer with a background in coastal geology. It’s not Reid’s job to be an emergency czar, but rather an activated support system for first responders. 

“From a fire standpoint,” he said in OR3’s “war room” office, “fire works kind of independently. If they need more fire engines, they’re not coming through me to get those. They’re working within their own communication channels. [The agencies] come to us if they have specific needs around, say, care and shelter, public works or other acute resources, like a specialized piece of equipment that they don’t otherwise have access to.”

OR3 is also designed to maximize cooperation across the chain of command, to communicate with the state, for example, or the county board of supervisors, or with neighboring counties or jurisdictions that have a common interest in any given disaster. 

“For the Moss Landing fire,” he said, “we sent one of our staff members [to Monterey County] to be in their emergency operations center as a liaison. Similarly, in 2023, when we were operating and activating for the floods, we had City of Santa Cruz and City of Watsonville representatives sitting right here, so they’re getting information and able to relay that back to their cities.”

The public’s right to know

The other big piece of OR3’s mission is to communicate with the public, and their primary tool in that realm is called CruzAware, a phone-alert and text-messaging warning system. CruzAware is an opt-in program — you have to register to get the alerts, though if you’re registered to vote you might already be signed up. It’s not exclusively an emergency service. It also provides information on road or weather conditions or prescribed burns. 

Communicating with the general public is a crucial component of minimizing loss of life or injury in a catastrophic emergency. The horrific wildfires that destroyed Lahaina in Hawaii in 2023, for example, exposed the shortcomings of Maui’s traditional public warning system. The sirens designed to sound during tsunami threats were not activated during the fires because officials determined that because the sirens had a specific purpose, to warn against tsunamis, and a specific call to action, to move into the mountains and higher ground, sounding them would be dangerous. 

Cryptic communication from official channels can result in tragedy, and cellphone technology has largely eliminated the use for sirens and similar systems. But text-based warning systems have their own shortcomings. Overuse of them, for example, can create public confusion or indifference. And technology in an emergency is often unreliable. Text-alert systems in Los Angeles during the January fires were plagued by tragic malfunctions, resulting in warnings that had wrong or missing information, or were too late to do any good.

Is CruzAware immune from such snafus? No, but it was used during the Moss Landing fire to remind locals of the situation and advise they might want to keep their windows closed. (CruzAware is not the only emergency text service; the Emergency Alert System goes out to everyone with a cellphone in a given area, regardless of whether they registered or not. The EAS was deployed briefly in Northern California in December to warn of a possible tsunami.)

Beware the quake

For many Californians, fire is first on the list of terrifying calamities to worry about, but such nightmares can take many forms, and can even include things such as a plane crash or an active shooter (or, yes, an asteroid strike). But perhaps the biggest challenge for the local emergency response infrastructure would be a large-scale earthquake. 

Unlike fires or storms, earthquakes happen suddenly without warning, and they are, for most part, not directional. The catastrophic aftereffects could come from anywhere and everywhere. What’s more, an earthquake is probably much more likely to bring about cellphone outages or electricity disruptions. Water and sewer systems are more vulnerable in an earthquake than in other disasters. Roads and bridges are more vulnerable, too. 

Coincidentally, seismic geologists use the same time frame that the astronomers used in determining that asteroid strike — the year 2032. But the odds of a major earthquake hitting the Bay Area in that frame is vastly bigger than 1.3%. It’s, in fact, 72%.

Loma Prieta is 35 years in the past. As Dave Reid said, that disaster occurred in a different world, at least when it comes to communications. Will wifi systems or digital networks work in a big quake? Who’s to say?

“We’ve become so dependent on the cellphone for so many things,” said Reid, “like banking. I don’t carry cash in my wallet these days. So, if a big earthquake happens and if the grocery store is still open, but their wifi is down, how are you paying for stuff? We’re going to cross a lot of bridges together in the next earthquake, because the age of technology has changed.”

In the case of cellphone tower failures, mobile cell towers might have to be brought in, at least to reestablish communications with first responders. The OR3 office is also equipped with old-school technologies like short-wave or ham radio. People in the field could be equipped with MURS, a versatile two-way radio technology. 

“We’re all overly reliant on the cellphone,” said Reid. “If the cellphone goes down, what is your next mode of communication?”

Be alert to CERT

In Santa Cruz County, there is a level of emergency preparedness between the individual and the local government. That level is known as CERT (Community Emergency Response Team). CERT is a local nonprofit aimed at activating individuals and neighborhoods in emergency situations, through training in basic emergency response.

On a recent weekday evening, at the Market Street Senior Center in Santa Cruz, I sat in on a CERT class, part of a more extensive volunteer training program for anyone who wants to be more helpful than helpless in a disaster. The instructor was talking about medications, specifically the only two medications that CERT volunteers are authorized to help administer in a disaster situation: the treatment of opioid overdose known as Narcan, and the auto-injector of epinephrine for the treatment of anaphylaxis known as the Epipen.

CERT has about 30 volunteer instructors countywide, often medical or emergency professionals who donate their time to train citizens in basic triage and treatment. The program, which began 10 years ago, has around 400 trained CERT volunteers, divided among 11 regional teams, who will be expected to don the green CERT vest and pitch in where they can help. A volunteer is obligated to attend a 2½-hour class once a week for four weeks, followed by an all-day session on Saturday to apply in the field what they’ve learned in the classroom, and to receive their CERT backpack containing the supplies they’ll need. For people who want to learn more, there are advanced classes beyond the basic training. CERT training also has a limited shelf life. Developments in emergency response are changing quickly enough such that someone trained more than five years ago will be required to take refresher courses to keep themselves properly prepared.

Volunteers are not only trained to help in the treatment of injuries or illness, but also in gathering information or in alerting authorities about problems in the field. Like OR3, CERT has to find that sweet spot between lone-wolf autonomy and strict hierarchy. 

“We work together within the organization and with the county and with various other groups,” said Mary Edmund, the executive director of the CERT’s auxiliary group, which raises money for the program. “So then we’re more successful, because we’re not doing anything that surprises people.”

In the wake of a potentially disastrous event, CERT volunteers have a kind of “ready, set, go” process. They receive text messages informing them of a possible need in a certain area. Those who respond that they are willing to deploy then get a standby message, giving them more details and preparing them to be ready to mobilize. Finally comes the order to go to a specific place for a specific task.

Emergency preparedness is a continuum that only begins with the go bag and evacuation plan that every household should have. CERT volunteers are told to address their family in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, then check on their neighbors. Only then do they step into the next concentric circle. CERT’s guiding principle is that, for the most part, the authorities are not going to help you immediately during a catastrophic event because they will be engaged in more critical tasks. For most of us, self-reliance is the first resource.

For its part, the county works the other way, clearing the way for first responders, identifying the broad needs for evacuation and activating channels of communication. County officials will then turn to CERT if they need help in specific areas.

Is it a perfect system? We know only after the fact. 

“In my mind,” said Dave Reid, “our role in emergency management is to learn forward. So I’ve learned things from understanding what happened in Maui and Lahaina. I’m observing and listening and reading about what’s happening in L.A. Because there are always lessons to learn. No response to any disaster is perfect. We’re human. The conditions are variable and ever-changing. In this role, we always have to learn forward, and we learn from our mistakes.”

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