Marin emergency operations center expands

Marin County’s newly expanded Emergency Operations Center was put to the test this month, thrusting the staff into action as a tsunami warning was issued in the wake of an earthquake near the Humboldt County coastline.

Emergency workers including an officer on a 24-hour shift started a chain reaction on Dec. 5 that relayed updates on the potential disaster to first responder agencies across the county.

Attention then shifted to alerting residents across Marin via text messages, emails, and pre-recorded phone calls. There were more than 1 million points of contact in the countywide alert, said Steven Torrence, the county’s emergency management director.

“This was the largest emergency alert that we’ve sent out in county history,” he told the Marin Operational Area Disaster and Citizen Corps Council at a meeting Thursday.

About 564,000 phone calls were made, and more than 26,000 people visited the county’s public emergency website, Torrence said. Coastal Marin communities such as Stinson Beach evacuated beaches before the alert was canceled shortly after noon that day.

“A lot of people were surprised; it was an effective alert,” said council chair Dennis Rodoni, a county supervisor. “I think we got their attention, which is good.”

Following the council meeting, the EOC staff held an open house to show the new upgrades to the San Rafael facility. Features include a large conference room that first responders from Marin cities, towns, and special districts can use as their own emergency operations center during a disaster.

An EOC partnership between the county and the municipalities was adopted last month.

“In the event that flooding is happening and they can’t get to their facilities, this is their backup,” Torrence said during the open house. “They come here and they can get to work.”

The room also is equipped with 30 computers for use, said Hannah Tarling, the emergency management coordinator.

The EOC staff gained more large monitors that can display weather and flood data, three new Starlink satellite dishes that provide Wi-Fi and cellular connections to emergency responders in remote areas, and 85 workstations that can be expanded to 115.

Woody Baker-Cohn, senior emergency management coordinator, is among the staff members who serve in the EOC’s 24/7 duty officer program that launched this year. Such officers activate emergency operations and contact other first responders if there is a major emergency.

Baker-Cohn said that about a dozen people were working at the EOC when they received the tsunami alert.

“Things pretty much went to planned protocol,” he said. “We knew there was a nearby earthquake that could’ve caused a tsunami so there wasn’t time to really analyze things — the responsible thing was to get people moving.”

The Bay Area’s wild winter weather spawned another unique event on Saturday, when San Francisco received a tornado warning. Hours later, a tornado struck Santa Cruz County.

Tarling said that if a similar warning were issued for Marin County, the EOC staff would take measures such as contacting first responders to ensure they saw the warning, monitoring weather radar information, and providing safety instructions to Marin residents via the AlertMarin website.

She noted that although tornados are rare in the area, the county’s hilly conditions could make it more difficult to predict tornadoes. The scenario served as a reminder to residents that such events can occur in their community with little to no warning.

The EOC is funded by a combination of grants and county general fund money.

Mari Ochoa, a spokesperson for the Marin County Fire Department, said that the center’s recent expansion is supported by the county’s partnership with the cities and towns, along with state and federal grants. She said that about $500,000 was spent on the expansion this year.

County supervisors also accepted $300,000 from the Bay Area Urban Areas Security Initiative to acquire two logistics trucks and field equipment to aid in mass care incidents.

During the open house, Rodoni said that the EOC was based on lessons learned from the 2017 North Bay wildfires.

“Out of that all this has grown because we realized that we needed to make a lot of improvements to be ready to respond to emergencies,” he said.

Rodoni said that county supervisors invested into the EOC to ensure that the county is prepared for the next emergency.

“I think we’re well on the way,” he said. “We certainly have some improvements that we need to work on, but we’re so much better suited than we were in 2017.”