Personal Considerations:

Motivation

A wildfire is a fast-moving event. Unless you are sure of your commitment you should not risk it. The worst possible case is for you to change your mind too late to safely evacuate. You then endanger the lives of others who may be called upon to try to rescue you. You may have encouraged others to take risks they would not have undertaken otherwise. So think twice, and rethink often.

You may not need to be in buffed physical shape, but to have a chance against a wildfire you do need to be able to withstand the emotional and physical stresses of engaging in such a dangerous task. Should the fire approach the heat load may become severe, and the air will be thick with toxic smoke and blowing embers that will burn through clothes and cause real injury. The largest cause of death among firefighters engaged in a wildfire incident is over-stress-heart failure in other words. It's no light matter.

Injuries to the respiratory tract, mouth, nasal passages, throat and lungs, are almost a given in a wildfire. Most of the smoke particles are small enough to lodge deep in the lungs causing immediate breathing problems and possible long-term damage. Filter protection for mouth and nose is called for. (See Mangan, Mitigating Risks to Firefighters.) Eye protection is a close second. Irritation and stoppage of tear ducts are common problems. Burns anywhere about the eye are serious.

Everyone staying must be staying willingly. They are otherwise a risk factor. It is neither smart nor fair to force the stress and risk of a wildfire on anyone. Start with identifying those most capable of dealing with an emergency situation and then continue in descending order of ability to act reasonably and independently. Include household employees if they are likely to be present a significant portion of the time. List everyone's qualifications for accepting responsibility in an emergency. This can be anything relevant, from experience in previous emergencies in Topanga to relevant training such as CPR or first aid.

Assuming that each individual would be present at the time of a wildfire, and based on their experience and abilities, what would each person be expected to do? This should be reasonably specific, e.g., who is going to keep track of where people are or who is going to make sure that all windows and doors are closed but not locked? Giving people specific jobs and responsibilities gives them a focus and the confidence of knowing that there is a larger scheme of which they are a part.

If you intend to leave at the first warning this may not seem essential, but you may have a repairman working around back or a gardener weeding down the hill. They would no doubt appreciate the courtesy of a warning. Don't laugh--in the '93 fire two Malibu ladies were congratulating themselves on having escaped the fire by running for the beach and paddling off in a kayak. Turns out they had left their non-English-speaking maids behind. Nice people can do not-nice things if the stress level is high enough.

We can never know when a wildfire will occur-they have occurred at all hours and on any day of the week. Is there always an able-bodied adult at home? No able-bodied adult is "always" at home so the question is, for what proportion of the time are adults away? How often is the house being looked after by a neighbor while you are away on vacation or business?

That is why it's important to talk through plans with all members of the family, regardless of who may remain to deal with a fire. It is important that everyone have a good idea of how each member of the family is likely to react to news of a wildfire. If one parent spends most of the business day in a Los Angles office, what should he or she do on hearing the news? Should someone try to reach school to retrieve the children? And what are the school contingency plans anyway?

Does everyone who can use a telephone know all the relevant phone numbers or know where to find them? They should be posted in a prominent place near a phone.

Children complicate the issue to the extent that nannies or caregivers and schools become involved. Each of them needs to be part of the plan. Parents should ensure that their nannies and caregivers know the plan and have assignments. Their English, or your language skills, should be honed on relevant subjects.

How old is your child? Family members too young to be entrusted with jobs related to protecting the home should not be there. Where they should be depends on your situation and what arrangements you may have been able to make outside the Canyon.

Children will want to stay with their parents. They may become fearful if separated and that may lead to post-fire issues. There is no clear or universal advice to be given here, only this--you will not have time to sort out the issues after a wildfire has been reported.

If anything is clear, it is that even the vigorous elderly probably ought to evacuate early. However vigorous they may seem in normal times, their reserves of energy and strength may be quickly exhausted. Typically they have respiratory systems that would be easily compromised. Once injured their evacuation becomes all the more difficult.

This is not a matter of age alone. You must decide on the basis of the unique character of your family members. Arrangements need to be made well in advance and need to be mutually agreed upon.

The more active your lifestyle--the more it involves being away from home--the more important it is to craft an emergency plan. The ability to communicate is the heart of your plan. How will you notify your spouse that a fire has occurred? How will the 'away' spouse know where the 'at home' spouse has gone?

For a time you may be able to use the telephone, but telephone poles burn and they may go out early in a fire. Cell phones in Topanga use antennas mounted on telephone poles and use electricity-they may go out quickly. Both the cell phone and regular phone systems may be overloaded within minutes of a major fire becoming public knowledge.

If unable to communicate, a mutually-agreed-upon plan provides confidence that your Other has behaved in a predictable and safe manner. Just like insurance, spending a few hours on integrating a plan into your lifestyle buys peace of mind.

The Community Alert Network (CAN) is a computer-operated system for making telephone calls to the public to announce emergency situations such as wildfires or other major incidents involving public safety. The system is controlled by the senior officer at the Lost Hills Sheriff Station and applies to the Topanga, Calabasas, Malibu, Agoura Hills, Lost Hills and Thousand Oaks areas.

When the situation warrants, an alert message will be recorded and a computer will dial the selected telephone numbers in the database at the rate of several thousand an hour. The message will be repeated twice and left on an answering machine. Messages may also be recorded in Spanish. There is a trade-off between the length and repetition of the message and its urgency. A select number of officials are empowered to activate the system-enough to ensure that the system is as reliable as the telephone system.

However, CAN is not a perfect system. Unlisted numbers, for example, will not be included unless the client authorizes their inclusion. But, it is a tool we have not had before, and it has a place in the event of wildfire. Everyone in Topanga ought to be sufficiently aware of the system to respond to it.

Copy, fill out and mail the CAN registration form at Appendix D to get your numbers into the system.

There are at least five schools--preschool through junior high--in the Canyon. Each has an emergency plan and T-CEP has coordinated its emergency planning with them.

Be sure that your personal/family plan, and the school's, dovetail. For example, if the school's plan is to evacuate the students to a location outside the Canyon, be sure the student understands that you may not be able to pick him up immediately. Talk about the emergency plan with the student. Children can imagine all kinds of terrible things when they are kept in ignorance--better by far to encourage them to talk about the issues so they will have some basis for imagining less terrible things.

If you intend to go after your child on your own, be sure to talk this over with the school and the parents' organization-you don't want to cause a traffic tie-up at the school that might interfere with the arrival of firefighting or safety forces such as the school's evacuation busses.

Fortunately the schools in the Canyon are located on or near relatively firesafe refuge areas-the Community House, Topanga Elementary School and the Big Rock Recreation area.

Get involved with your school's emergency plan. Support your child by making sure his or her emergency package is in good condition and has some treats and favorite toys included. It may never be used, but it can make an immense difference if it is. Becoming actively involved with the school's emergency plan will help reassure you that your child will be looked after in a real situation and will reassure your child that you have taken care for him or her.

We alluded to this issue before, but it is worth special consideration. It has happened in the past that homeowners have fled from a wildfire leaving baby-sitters behind, unprepared and with little English to help them. I wouldn't want to have such a thing on my conscience.

Consider all the people who live on or take care of your household and property in your emergency plan. Make sure they understand what the plan is and the role you expect them to play. If they are to have no role also make that clear. Make sure they know how to use emergency numbers such as 911, and that they will recognize a call from neighbors or officials warning of danger. Have a plan prepared for them in the event there is no other adult available. If you need help translating your plan into the necessary language, T-CEP may be able to help. Don't put it off.

Of course, when the alarm comes the first rule is to preserve life. The object of planning is to make the best use of whatever time there may be available between the alarm and when you have to leave.

The old camping adage is 'take everything you think you might need that you can carry'. This applies to papers, insurance policies, bank books and checks, phone books, and other critical records. It also applies to photo albums, favorite pictures, antiques, clothes, computer discs, etc.

If you had time and a large enough van you could take it all. But you probably won't have either the time or the van, so now is the time to identify the critical items and to keep them together for easy evacuation. In the bad old days of the serious Cold War, the Army office I worked for in Germany had a big box with stretcher-like handles. Fondly known as the "Bug-Out Box," it was to hold everything we would need when the war started. Everything that we would have needed to stay in business was tagged, and several times a year we practiced gathering everything together, loading the box and carrying it outside just to make sure we could do it.

You may not need a Bug-Out Box, but you should make sure you know what important stuff you'll take and where it is. If you earn your living with your computer, you may not have to lug the whole machine, but you probably should be backing up files and keeping the back-ups in a safe place or at least in one place for easy retrieval in an emergency. If certain tools are critical to your livelihood the same applies. If they are not easily moved they should be protected, and if not protected then insured. If not insured, you'd best hope they are cheap and easily available.

This is another of those decisions you need to make as a family. Essential items have priority, but every member should get to take at least one favorite item-whether a toy or the heirloom mortar and pestle.

Neighborhood

The neighborhoods of Topanga are dictated by the terrain and the character of the roads. That means they are of all different shapes and sizes--from compact groups of a few houses to dozens scattered along canyon bottoms.

Steep hills and sharp curves characterize most of the roads, even the main Topanga Canyon Boulevard or Old Topanga Canyon Road. Topanga is not easy driving at best. Under stress, with many vehicles trying to move quickly in both directions, and with poor visibility on top of the steepness and narrowness common to most roads, accidents are all but inevitable. Some of our neighborhoods could become dangerous traps.

Some neighborhoods have only one exit road, and a narrow one at that. There are two things you want from a neighborhood--more than one means of escape and help from your neighbors in an emergency. The more restricted your exit, the more important it is that you look to making it safe to stay. If that's not possible, then you have to accept the implication--to leave early.

Even in the very worst case, however, all parts of Topanga are unlikely to be threatened by the same fire. In nearly all likely cases the majority of Topanga will not be threatened and the best thing for most people to do will be to remain calm and at home, plugged into the T-CEP communication net via their own radios or a communications contact in their neighborhood. We have much more to say about communications later. By all means listen to one of the news radio or TV stations. Undoubtedly the TV stations will be giving wall-to-wall coverage of the fire. However experience suggests much of what they say will be, if not wrong, then not entirely accurate.

A saddle is the low area between two high points or hilltops in a ridge line. In a wildfire saddles become channels for high winds as the heat from the fire flows uphill. The wind tends to speed up as it squeezes between the hilltops and then blows over the ridge with greater force. Saddles are not good places to site homes, nor are they good places to seek refuge if caught in the open by a wildfire.

A chimney is a narrow side canyon usually tilted up toward a ridge line. The steeper and narrower the side canyon, the more it will act like a chimney drawing hot air from a fire into it and speeding it uphill. Chimneys can become infernos in a wildfire.

Chimney and saddles are especially important for their effects on roads running across a slope. Heat normally flows uphill anyway, but a road passing through a chimney can represent a major danger to a vehicle trying to use the road, whether a fire engine or someone seeking to escape the fire. The same is true for vehicles following a road passing through a saddle. Fire conditions can worsen almost in an instant.

Chimneys can be recognized by the fact that when a road turns into the hillside it may be passing into a chimney. When the road seems to pointing away from the hillside it is leaving a chimney and heading toward the 'nose.' The nose, or most forward part of the curve, is probably the safest place to be if caught in the open. This is because the wind and heat tend to flow to either side of the nose. If caught in this position, lie in as bare a spot as you can find on the uphill side of the road in as low a spot as you can-in a ditch if possible. This maximizes the chance that the wind will carry the heat of the fire over you.

Heat is a major risk factor and potential killer. Dehydration is the least of it, though is not to be ignored. In the wind-driven fire typical of wildfires in our area, the hot wind can cause serious burns if bare skin is left exposed too long. Wind gusts can carry bursts of super-heated air that can cause serious burns almost instantly. Strong winds can drive a literal blizzard of sparks, burning branches, hot dust and sand, all of which lodge in clothing or even wrinkles in skin.

The psychological effects of the stress of remaining near a wildfire in full cry may cause one to become less sensitive to pain. The result can be that you may not become aware of a burn until after it has become potentially serious. The following diagram suggests the extent of the danger. The suggested margins are not forbidden zones, rather they suggest the precautions one needs to take and the danger one needs to be aware of within 200-400 feet of a wildfire.

Have we mentioned communications? Being able to access reliable information is at the core of any emergency preparedness scheme. Only then can you know when it might be wiser to evacuate or feasible to stay.

This is not an easy problem to solve. In times past, the public media have been notoriously inaccurate. In the 1993 fire, locations named as aflame were not and sometimes were said to be miles from their true locations. This not a criticism of the media--they do what they can with what they have--but it is a cautionary note, and a prime reason why T-CEP exists.

T-CEP tries to deal with this issue in two main ways--via the Hotline and the Disaster Response Team HAM radio network. The Hotline number is 310/455-3000. It is shared between the Topanga Town Council and T-CEP. In normal times it connects to an answering machine. In the event of some local problem, such as a temporary road closure, there will be announcements on the machine, but normally there will be no one to answer the phone. In a major emergency, however, the T-CEP Hotline Team staffs four incoming phone lines in our Emergency Operations Center (EOC) to receive information from residents and to answer questions with the most recent reliable information available to us.

Topanga boasts two main radio networks--the T-CEP Disaster Response Team (DRT) net which is used to gather and coordinate information among all T-CEP elements, and the Arson Watch. They are technically different, but they connect to the EOC where radio operators are able to communicate throughout the Canyon. DRT and Arson Watch radio operators cooperate in an emergency to make sure both nets are open. Depending on the situation, Arson Watch and DRT mobile teams may be out and about the area checking for damage, helping control traffic and verifying information reported to the EOC by other means.

In this way T-CEP is able to quickly establish a sense of what the situation is and to relay this information to official agencies as well as concerned residents who will be calling the Hotline.

At the same time, information gathered and verified at the EOC is relayed to the relevant emergency authorities, whether the Sheriff, California Highway Patrol, Fire Department, Caltrans, County Public Works or whoever may be in a position to respond with help. T-CEP has spent much time and effort establishing and maintaining these links to the larger world of disaster responders. Residents need to incorporate in their emergency plans how they will connect with T-CEP information. The Hotline number, again, is 310/455-3000. In the '96 wildfire and the El Niño storms of '97 and '98 the EOC was active, and handled as many as 700 phone calls in an 18-hour period.

One way you can keep informed and help T-CEP keep up-to-date is by volunteering to become a local correspondent, taking some training with the DRT so you know how it works, and acquiring a radio capable of communicating with the T-CEP Emergency Operations Center. In this way you can act as your neighborhood's eyes and ears with T-CEP.

Your decision to remain in the case of a wildfire should be predicated on a commitment to obtain the necessary information to make your place as fire safe as possible. You should also recognize that by staying you are volunteering to become a firefighter--you will certainly be running the risks of a firefighter.

It behooves you, therefore, to get at least some basic training. Firefighting is a technical subject, but there are books on firefighting technique. The Los Angeles County Fire Department Station 69 in Topanga sponsors a "call firefighter" team of volunteers who undergo formal training as firefighters.

T-CEP has developed a training program for its volunteers. Some of those courses are available at minimum cost to the public. These include Red Cross certified first aid and CPR (for adults and children) as well as a series of Red Cross disaster-related courses such as Damage Assessment and Living With Earthquakes.

Two T-CEP members recently attended a week-long course to become certified instructors for the national Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program. This course is taught as a series of seven two-to-three-hour-long classes. They are conducted over a crowded weekend or on seven consecutive Thursday evenings, for example. The CERT program deals with all forms of disaster, disaster psychology, elementary first aid and introductory urban search and rescue. It is an excellent overview and highly recommended for personal information or as a basis for volunteering with another organization.

The more of your senses actively involved with information, the better you remember. Silent reading is good. Hearing information while seeing it is better--that's why television commercials work. Acting out, reciting poetry or playing a role is better yet because it involves the whole body in the process of learning. And best of all is to involve the emotions with the information.

This whole-body involvement with information is the basis for the drills that T-CEP conducts several times a year. It's why the Fire and Sheriff Departments spend a substantial proportion of their time and dollars on training. If you must act under the stress of an emergency, you will be much more likely to recall what you should be doing if you have not only written it down and talked about it but have also acted it out.

Even within your own family, conducting rehearsals will give everyone a better grasp of what might happen and how they might be expected to behave. Familiarity will help reduce the stress level in a real event. Rehearsals can be simple affairs such as sitting around a table and playing "what if" games. Keying the discussion to the day's news is a good way into the discussion. If there had been a house fire that day it could raise the issue, "What would we have done if that fire had started a big one?" Or, "They're predicting Santa Anas, what have we been intending to do about the wood pile?"

Kids in school can play a very useful role if they use show-and-tells, book reports or other writing assignments to gather information or talk about subjects related to emergency preparation. There are many ways to stay engaged with the topic. The more frequently you do it, the less strange and frightening it becomes and the more it seems like just good sense-like looking both ways when you cross a street.