Officials say Fallbrook is well-prepared

By: TOM PFINGSTEN - Staff Writer | Sunday, October 16, 2005 7:20 AM PDT ∞

FALLBROOK ---- For many communities across the nation, Hurricane Katrina and the devastation it wrought last month on the Gulf Coast was a wake-up call that sent government officials scrambling to update their own disaster-readiness plans.

Special Report

But Fallbrook and the rural areas nearby had experienced their own wake-up call three years earlier: the Gavilan fire that destroyed 43 homes and burned nearly 6,000 acres.

Some of the lessons learned from that 2002 blaze have now been converted into an emergency-preparedness guide ---- complete with detailed evacuation maps and instructions ---- that will be mailed to every household in the area in the next few weeks, local officials said.

The guide, compiled by the Fallbrook Fire Safe Council and the North County Fire Protection District and published in both English and Spanish, paints a clear picture of what residents can do and where they should go in the event of a local catastrophe.

Fire, quakes, contamination

In Fallbrook, a wildfire is the most likely emergency to cause evacuations and injuries, followed by a catastrophic earthquake or a chemical spill, Fire Marshal Steve Abbott said last week.

After the Gavilan fire, some residents theorized that if the winds hadn't changed direction, the blaze could have burned through downtown Fallbrook.

"It can certainly happen here, with old-age houses, old shake roofs and lots of vegetation," Abbott said, about whether a powerful wildfire could intrude on the central community of Fallbrook. "The entire town? No, but certainly a chunk of it."

A fire's path is usually unpredictable, Abbott said, and an earthquake large enough to destroy buildings in Fallbrook may cause damage and injuries, but would not necessarily cause continued danger or lead to evacuations. Therefore, residents need to be prepared for a range of possibilities, from needing to flee to surviving alone for days.

Lt. Grant Burnett, commander of the Fallbrook Sheriff's Substation, said that even in a powerful earthquake, stranded residents in the town's rural neighborhoods might indeed require evacuation.

"Certain areas in Fallbrook could need to be evacuated in the event of an earthquake, because we would have road blockages," Burnett said Wednesday. "And, if it's a large earthquake, you always have to consider that there will be aftershocks."

An ounce of prevention

Personal preparedness is key in surviving ---- or escaping ---- a disaster, officials said. The hilly terrain and rural character of the Fallbrook and De Luz areas make planning evacuation routes especially important.

"This town is riddled with easement roads and grove roads that may be very good routes ---- or death traps," Abbott said. "And the condition of those (roads) can change over time ... so it's important that people periodically drive those routes. The time of an emergency is absolutely the wrong time to try to figure it out."

Every useful outbound route in the region was included on the evacuation map that is being mailed out in the next few weeks.

On the map ---- a two-page brochure that opens into a detailed evacuation guide ---- Mission Road and Reche Road are shown in bold lines, along with others such as Gird, Rice Canyon and Olive Hill. Smaller connectors such as Wilt Road and the impossibly curved Alta Vista Drive are outlined in gray, and 14 temporary evacuation centers are spread around the page.

Perhaps the most emphasized instruction in the brochure is found in bold letters on the back of the map: "Don't wait to be told to evacuate!" Besides regularly driving potential escape routes, as Abbott suggested, families need to have a plan so that they do not need to await instructions in a life-threatening situation, said Burnett.

"Everyone in the family that's not a child should be familiar with how to get out of the area they live in," he said. "I think it would be very beneficial if they just put that map on their refrigerator. It seems like it's against human nature, but when we give the preliminary notification to be prepared to evacuate, people should be leaving, and not waiting to be told to get out right now."

Abbott agreed.

"The bottom line is that folks need to be prepared, they need to have a plan, and they shouldn't wait to be told to evacuate ---- if they feel threatened, they should go," he said. "The situations are so dynamic that what's true right now could be different five minutes from now."

A pound of cure

If a disaster were ever to hit Fallbrook, various agencies and facilities are designed to spin into action, including the fire district, the Sheriff's Department and Fallbrook Hospital, officials said.

Though specific disaster scenarios are difficult to predict, emergency-preparedness leaders offered a general picture: Law enforcement officials would order evacuations and coordinate the exodus; firefighters and hazardous material crews would attempt to contain damage; and emergency workers would deliver the wounded to Fallbrook Hospital.

At the hospital, patients would be seen by a staff that has been trained to work in the urgent, stressful conditions of a large-scale emergency, said Fallbrook Hospital spokeswoman Monique Murphy-Mijares

"We conduct disaster drills several times a year that cover internal and external disasters," she said. "We would set up triage and be prepared for the patients that come our way."

Murphy-Mijares said that the hospital implemented an "emergency incident" plan nine years ago and adapted it to fit the facility, which has a fully functioning emergency room that would quickly be expanded during a disaster.

Thanks to a county grant earlier this year, the hospital was able to purchase equipment for setting up tents outside and administering triage to many more patients than are normally seen at once, she said.

She pointed out that previous disasters have illustrated how medical teams pull together during a crisis, adding, "Our staff is dedicated and qualified to provide health care services in the event of a disaster."

On the roads

As for traffic, Burnett said that he has experience getting residents out of a town where all the cars funnel onto a handful of outlets. He was assigned to the Paradise fire in 2003, while working as a lieutenant at the Vista Sheriff's Station, and was required to evacuate residents from the small community of Crest.

"Crest is very unique, because there are only two roads out," he said. "One went down into the canyon, where the fire was, so that left one road for the whole community to use. But we managed to get everyone who wanted to evacuate out of Crest. I shut down the lane used to come up, so that we had both lanes going out."

In Fallbrook, Burnett said he can envision the same scenario playing out, if the whole community was threatened in the same way.

"It takes a long period of time to get all those people out, especially if you have people who have not evacuated before," he said. "At certain points, you're going to have logjams and bottlenecks, and people get very concerned."

Even so, Burnett said widespread evacuations are possible and practical in Fallbrook, especially with the release of the map, which defines clear routes and evacuation points where residents could regroup on their way out of town.

County Supervisor Bill Horn was not available for comment last week, but his office said that he is pleased with the tangible emergency plans being laid in Fallbrook. A spokesman said Horn has plans to meet with county emergency services director Deborah Steffan to discuss disaster-preparedness in his mostly rural North County district.

Learning the hard way

Richard Burke, a Fallbrook resident who lost his home in the Gavilan blaze, calmly describes his flight from a house that had been built less than three months before.

"I came home from church and saw smoke that Sunday morning," he said. "I saw fire all along the ridge."

Assuming that airdrops would save the day ---- and his brand-new home ---- Burke stayed put until it was almost too late, extinguishing embers that flew up under the eaves. On the way out, he forgot his glasses and his wallet, and when he went back for them, the house was filled with smoke, its roof smoldering.

He heard the valve on his propane tank explode as he sped off. And until the smoke cleared, he couldn't see where he was going on Santa Margarita Road, his only way out.

Now a Red Cross volunteer, Burke said there are several things he would change about his 2002 evacuation.

"I would have taken my tax records," he said. "My wife was upset I didn't take any pictures, and there was a lot of paperwork I had to reconstruct afterwards. Also, certificates ---- marriage certificates, birth certificates ---- and I guess my degrees that were hanging up on the wall."

He said if it ever happens again, he won't make any assumptions.

"I certainly would have packed up the car instead of trying to fight the fire," he said, adding that he sees the map recently distributed by the fire district as an essential part of being ready for a fire. "I think it's wonderful, because it reminds you to pack up things and get ready to get out ---- and don't try to save your house."

Contact staff writer Tom Pfingsten at (760) 731-5799 or tpfingsten@nctimes.com.

First name only. Comments including last names, contact addresses, e-mail addresses or phone numbers will be deleted. Attempts to misrepresent your identity or impersonate any person will not be approved. All comments are screened before they appear online, so please keep them brief. Comments reflect the views of those commenting and not necessarily those of the North County Times or its staff writers. Click here to view additional comment policies.