Malibu Town Hall Spotlights Municipal
Wildfire Preparedness
• MultiAgency Participants to Address
Residents’ Concerns
In a year that public firefighting agencies
say could be one of the worst in wildfire history, the City of
Malibu has scheduled a community-wide town hall to
assess local preparedness and discuss the
lessons learned from last year’s devastating blazes.
Tempers flared at a number of small
meetings for residents in areas affected by last
year’s firestorms, but this is the first forum open
to everyone in the community that will address general wildfire
preparedness, response expectations, evacuation
policies and other major public concerns.
The town hall is expected to be of special
importance to residents of areas of Malibu that have not burned
in decades and are viewed by wildfire pattern experts as
particularly vulnerable in a drought year for which record
high temperatures and frequent Santa Ana winds in the 50-70 mph
range are being forecast.
The fuel load in the local hills and along
the coast—chamise, sage and sumac—is described as
being at an all-time high. Even areas that have burned within
the last decade could find themselves engulfed in flames again
because of the unparalleled flammability of the
chaparral.
The thrust of the presentations will
be—now that wildfire has become a year-round danger
and firefighting agencies face the increased
probability of simultaneous blazes—on the importance of
resident preparedness.
A new openness and willingness to discuss
resource limitations by firefighting and other public agencies
is also likely to mean that residents will continue to be
exposed to a more realistic appraisal of fire response
times and equipment deployment.
The question asked at previous neighborhood
gatherings by several residents who lost their homes in last
year’s Corral fire—“Why wasn’t the
department there for me”—will undobtedly be
directed again at representatives from the Los Angeles
County Fire Department.
County Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman will
elaborate on policies related to access, turnaround space,
protectability, probable success rate and other factors that go
into determining where to allocate resources.
Representatives of the Los Angeles
County Sheriff’s Department and the California
Highway Patrol will be asked to address thorny ingress and
egress issues, movement within an impacted neighborhood,
roadblock establishment and traffic flow.
Of major interest will be the probable
discussion of evacuation policies during a public
emergency. Questions about who is in charge, the
difference between voluntary and mandatory
evacuation and the legal rights of citizens are expected to
arise.
A representative of Los Angeles County
Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky will address county
government’s role in wildfire preparedness,
including whether more firefighting equipment, such as the
SuperScooper aircraft, should now become available
year-round.
The city has also been urged to have
representatives of local communications providers present
to address issues of reliability and what has been done to
reduce the possibility that residents will have limited public
information options during a crisis.
The forum will take place on Wednesday,
June 25, at 7 p.m. in the Malibu Performing Arts Center at
23825 Stuart Ranch Road behind Malibu City Hall.
