Topangans Prepare For Wildfire
Posted by Daniel Antolin on Apr 10, 2011 - 10:56:01 PM
Topanga Canyon gridlock during evacuation drill. Photo courtesy of Facebook.
TOPANGA CANYON—Sleeping in will not be an option for more than 10,000 Topanga Canyon residents who want to survive during the early morning of Saturday, May 7, because they will have to evacuate their homes as result of a spreading wildfire.
However, this will only be the voluntary two-hour All-Canyon Evacuation Drill, the fourth of its kind, designed to simulate a Santa Ana wind-driven fire, which the drill will set up as starting on Santa Monica Road and moving toward and blocking Topanga Canyon Boulevard.
These circumstances, including gridlock resulting from the area because there will be only one lane of travel and limited evacuation routes, will make evacuation from the area improbable if a real wildfire broke out.
Because the drill, which will take place from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., will operate under the assumed scenario that evacuation is improbable, residents will be expected to report to their designated Community Safety Areas (CSAs) or Neighborhood Survival Areas (NSAs). This is designed to save residents' lives and prevent gridlock so as to allow firefighters to be able to enter the area.
Volunteers greet Topangans at safety area. Photo courtesy of Facebook.
"Residents will be greeted by CERT [Community Emergency Response Team] volunteers from throughout the region who may also be able to answer their questions, or will take their information for a follow-up phone call if they do not have the answers to their questions," Maria Grycan, Los Angeles County Fire Department community services representative, told Canyon News.
"Firefighters will also be patrolling the NSAs should residents want to stay around to wait and speak to a firefighter," Grycan said.
To prepare for the possibility of a wildfire breaking out during school hours, a separate drill is being planned to take place on Wednesday, May 4, at local area schools to exercise how teachers and students would be sheltered during this kind of natural disaster.
A wildfire breaking out in the area is more than possible given that "the same forces of ecology and geography that make Topanga one of the most spectacular places in Southern California have also made it particularly vulnerable to natural disasters such as brushfires and floods," states Third District Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky in the most recent Topanga Disaster Survival Guide.
A 2011 guide will be sent to all residents during Topanga Safety Week from May 2 through 6. The most recent guide can be downloaded from the Topanga Survival Guide website.
Volunteers address Topangan's concerns. Photo courtesy of Facebook.
Last year, 1,036 residents participated in the drill, which was the first time it was conducted to test the readiness of the entire canyon. This year's exercise is expected to attract more participants with an increasing number of recent natural disasters occurring throughout the world acting as an impetus.
"We have worked very hard over the past year to continue our educational efforts, and with two recent disasters in New Zealand and Japan, we have noticed that awareness, especially about being prepared, has once again taken the forefront for many people," Grycan said. "We have seen this drill grow in both size and scope over the years, and we are hopeful that participation this year exceeds last year."
One week prior to the drill, the Third District's Rapid Notify system will send a reminder message to the community. Rapid Notify is the second notification system used for these annual exercises since they first began four years ago.
What will make this year's drill unique from those conducted in previous years is that it will utilize Alert LA County, an emergency mass notification system that will alert local residents and businesses with phone calls, emails and text messages.
Since February, the Topanga Management Planning Program has received numerous phone calls from residents asking that they be added to Alert LA County because this is the only way that contact information, with the exception of listed and unlisted landline phone numbers, can be implemented into the emergency mass notification system.
"If the call is picked up by an answering machine, the system will leave a recorded message," states the Los Angeles County website. "If the number called is busy or does not answer, the system will redial the number in an attempt to deliver the message."
Topanga Canyon residents have prior experience using Alert LA County, having helped test the emergency mass notification system on May 18, 2009 before its implementation for the entire county the following month. In fact, the All-Canyon Evacuation Drill is itself a test program meant to generate results that will be used to create emergency management plans in other ares of Los Angeles County.
In order to register contact information such as a cell phone number, work number and email address with the Alert LA County database, visit alert.lacounty.gov.
-
Serving Bel Air, Benedict Canyon, Beverly Hills. Brentwood, Laurel Canyon, Los Feliz, Malibu, Pacific Palisades, Melrose, Santa Monica, Sherman Oaks, Studio City, Topanga, Canyon, Westwood & Hollywood Hills.
