When smoke rolls in: Emergency planning and evacuations

You’ve heard the saying: plan for the worst and hope for the best. But when it comes to emergency planning, what does that actually mean? If a wildfire starts near your property, do you know where to look for information? What’s the difference between an evacuation warning and an evacuation order?

This week, the commissioners had a very timely conversation with Adriane Beck, director of the Office of Emergency Management, about how to talk to your household about your emergency plan, why you should sign up for Smart911 and much more.

 Links mentioned in this episode:

• Sign up for Smart911
• “Go bag” or emergency kit checklist
• Miller Peak fire information
• Pre-disaster mitigation plan - 2024
• Ready.gov - Emergency preparedness resources

Thank you to Missoula's Community Media Resource for podcast recording support!

Transcript

Juanita Vero: [00:00:10] Welcome back to the agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners. I'm Juanita Vero and I'm here with my fellow commissioner Josh Slotnick. Dave Strohmaier is at the National Association of Counties conference in Tampa, Florida this week. So he's not with us.

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:22] He's sweating even more than we are.

Juanita Vero: [00:00:24] So that means... But there's lots of air conditioning down there. But today we're joined by Director of Office of Emergency Management Adriane Beck. She's here to answer our questions about disaster planning, and especially what evacuation may look like to Missoula County residents. So, Adriane...

Adriene Beck: [00:00:39] Thanks, Juan. I'm happy to come back to to your podcast.

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:43] So, Adriane, and for anybody listening, you know the date. It's it's July 15th today. So as we're taping on July 15th, there's a fire in Miller Creek. Yes. What's going on?

Adriene Beck: [00:00:53] Indeed. We were notified of a new fire start yesterday, the 14th in the evening. The column was very visible from town. It was it was difficult to determine kind of which drainage it is in. If you've looked at the topography up there, it's kind of a spider web of of different drainages, but it's very near where the former fire that was there and the Plant Creek fire about a couple of weeks ago. Currently, we do have a lot of resources on it, A complex incident management team has been ordered. These are the large national teams that come in to to help the forest and help local government amass resources to put out the fire.

Josh Slotnick: [00:01:26] So does that mean folks from afar are coming to join local people?

Adriene Beck: [00:01:30] Correct? Yeah, but last night the fire was estimated to be about 500 acres. Don't have an update as of right now, but as we get into what we call the burn period, where we get the hotter, drier, windier conditions, as you can see out your window, the fire is getting active.

Josh Slotnick: [00:01:43] So do you have any specific concerns about this fire?

Adriene Beck: [00:01:47] Any time that we have a fire that becomes that established that quickly adjacent to our communities and infrastructure, where people are that always amps up the complexity and makes it much more of a concern for us. I oftentimes say, you know, fires in the wilderness are concerning from other perspectives, but when they impact people and the things that people rely on and depend upon, that really is what amps up our concern.

Josh Slotnick: [00:02:10] And imagine for everybody here, we all kind of know somebody who lives close to Miller Creek. But Miller Creek isn't the only drainage that leads into the Missoula Valley, nor it's the only place in the county with a whole bunch of people living near trees. I imagine people want to know, well, what's the plan if if the fire comes close to me, if a fire comes close to me, what's the evacuation plan? Nobody's told me. What am I supposed to do? What would your response be?

Adriene Beck: [00:02:31] Well, we say this response, and oftentimes it's not met with great receptivity, but truly having an engaged, informed public that is ready and able to receive emergency alerts so that they know when they're going to be impacted and then be prepared to follow those instructions. And we say that because oftentimes people will come back from the West Coast and they'll say, well, their whole town is mapped out with these tsunami evacuation routes. And that's true. They have a single threat that is going to always be coming from one direction, and the protective action is always going to be the same. But in wildfire, it's very dynamic when topography, time of day, time of year changes how that fire is going to behave. And so what we have asked you to do in the past may not be what we ask you to do for the fire that happens tomorrow. Furthermore, we have lots of hazards that we face in western Montana, so the protective action for a wildfire may be very different than the protective action for a hazardous material spill.

Juanita Vero: [00:03:22] When you said alerts, what do you mean by that?

Adriene Beck: [00:03:24] So we use a software called Rave Mobile Safety, which has a component called smart 911. People can go to smart 911.com to create a safety profile. And we could talk in a whole nother podcast about the limitations of emergency alerts and how technology has made our lives so much better in so many ways, but has hindered us in others. In the past, everybody had a landline phone, and that landline phone was associated with a physical address. And so being able to communicate with the public based on where their house was located and proximity to a hazard was very easy. Not many people have landline phones anymore, and that compulsion to have the phone associated with an address no longer exists. And so we have to ask the public to proactively do that for us to register their phones to their address and create that safety profile as a way for us to communicate with them.

Josh Slotnick: [00:04:13] So that standard methods of communication, in this moment, it feels like there's so much we are so connected. Is that not enough? Do we really need to have smart 911 as well? Is this just another thing clogging up my phone?

Adriene Beck: [00:04:25] Well, it is not necessarily work. Yes, yes, it does really work. And there are really kind of three thresholds of alerts that we can send. And it's all based on the amount of inconvenience that we're willing to kind of push on to that end user. So we have low level alerts for traffic collision on Reserve Street. That's going to bind up traffic for an hour. We're not forcing that on to anyone's phone. Even if you opt in you probably aren't going to get it. It just it goes out. Just make people aware. But we're not disrupting people with that. A smart911 alert is a geo targeted alert that you've told us that you want to receive based on where your house is. And so the level of disruption is minimal, but it is relevant. It is relevant to your home and your particular situation. The highest level of alert that we have, if anybody's received an Amber alert, for example, that comes through the wireless emergency alerts through the Integrated Public Alerts and Warning System, which is controlled by Department of Homeland Security, we have the authority to send those types of alerts. You don't have to opt in to those types of alerts, but the threshold of kind of that level of disruption that we are willing to kind of force onto people's phones has to be very, very high. And so for an evacuation warning, for example, we put out a geo targeted Smart911 alert yesterday evening to notify the 8 to 10 homes that were in that evacuation warning area instead of sending a wireless emergency alert, which would light up the entire county for those eight people, if that makes sense.

Josh Slotnick: [00:05:48] That does that does make sense. So for those eight folks, we'll sheriff's deputies go to their door and knock on the door as well.

Adriene Beck: [00:05:54] That is the best case scenario. And that's something that we always aim to be able to do. Being able to have that whites of the eyes conversation with someone to ensure that they received the message, they understand the message is always our goal. But some of these incidents evolve very, very quickly. And being able to guarantee that that is going to happen is just something that we can't do.

Juanita Vero: [00:06:12] So people may receive and understand the message should they act. What can we yeah, say more about that.

Adriene Beck: [00:06:18] So we've worked over the years with the sheriff as well as previous sheriffs and statewide with the Montana Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, to standardize kind of the language that we use in an attempt to be as concise, but also to ensure that people understand what we're asking them to do. And so we use a two stage evacuation system, whereas if we have time and something's happening, we want you to be aware of it. I want you to know that things could change. We're going to issue an evacuation warning. Typically, that's done out of an abundance of caution for the situations that exist at that time. And it's really to put people on notice so that they can start thinking about hopefully they thought about it before, but let's be honest so that they can start thinking about if I have to evacuate, what do I need to take with me? Where am I going to go? Where am I going to stay? What important documents should I gather? How am I going to communicate with my kids who maybe are at summer camp? And this is happening in the middle of the day, so they can start thinking about some of those types of things. It does not mean that you can't evacuate at that point in time. It just means it's we're putting you on notice that this is a possibility that should be followed, then with an evacuation order, if the conditions kind of continue to deteriorate or becomes a public safety issue where an evacuation order is warranted, and that is us saying it is not safe for you to stay here anymore, we're asking you to leave. We always want and I say want. We always want to do that in a two staged approach where we give people a warning and then we say, okay, now it's time to go and here's your order. Sometimes the conditions just don't allow us that luxury, and sometimes we will have from a know nothing fire to all of a sudden it is an evacuation order.

Juanita Vero: [00:07:45] When was the last time there was such an order?

Adriene Beck: [00:07:47] During last summer. There was a fire at the name escapes me, but it was down in in Lolo. It was on a red flag day, which is a very hazardous condition, weather condition where we had low relative humidities, high temperatures and high winds. A fire started in very flashy fuels, so like grass. So it moves very fast and there was no time to to issue warnings. It was get out, get out of the way now.

Juanita Vero: [00:08:08] And how did how did it go?

Adriene Beck: [00:08:09] Everyone got out. Um, you know, evacuations are always chaotic. Our hope and our goal is to make them as seamless as possible and as orderly as possible. And we don't. And I say we I'm talking about the larger we, which is the the incident commanders, the law enforcement, emergency management, kind of collectively making these decisions. They're not made lightly pulling people out of their homes, out of their safe areas and asking them just to uproot and go someplace else in the middle of a chaotic situation is not ideal, and it's not something that that we take lightly.

Josh Slotnick: [00:08:41] What do people do with livestock in that kind of a situation?

Juanita Vero: [00:08:44] And pets?

Adriene Beck: [00:08:46] Right. These are the the things that, you know, when we talk about what's the plan for evacuation, it's be prepared to receive emergency alerts and follow directions. But more than that, it's thinking about what you're susceptible to based on where you live, and kind of pre-gaming out your own evacuation based on your unique circumstances. If you have 20 cats, you know, if you have dogs and horses and cats and all of the other things, chickens thinking about, well, what do I do with those types of animals? Are they going to come with me? Am I going to cut the fence and just let them kind of escape the fire on their own? We see the whole host of those options being deployed. But to your specific question, you know, in 2017, when we had some significant evacuation areas around the Rice Ridge Fire and the Seeley Lake area, there was a lot of cattle questions, and we were able to work with our non-governmental agencies and kind of our codes, our community organizations active in disaster and work out an agreement with Paws Up, who said, yep, you can bring cattle here. We'll keep them segregated. And so those are the types of community relationships and neighbors helping neighbors that really pay dividends in these kinds of situations. We also work very closely with animal control to ensure that if we do open up a shelter, if we do have people that have needs for their pets in in emergency, that we can find those resources.

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:58] So all of us are familiar with these signs. You often see at trailheads where there's an arrow, it looks like half a pie with a bunch of colors going from no big deal to go home. Don't even think about it. Super dangerous. So if the arrow is over here and the red hot, super dangerous, why isn't it just that all campfires are illegal? Blanket.

Adriene Beck: [00:10:17] Oftentimes those two things do go hand in hand. But we have a fire danger rating system, which is the what people often refer to as Smokey's arm. You know, the the gauge that you see at the base of trailheads as you're entering national forest. And that goes all the way from low or moderate fire danger all the way up to extreme. And right now we're we're sitting on July 15th in Missoula, Montana. We're sitting at very high fire danger, burgeoning on to extreme. And when we look at the forecast, there's no real relief in sight. We're going to be in the high 90s, breaking into the hundreds over the weekend, which, if you think about what that is doing to the fuels that are on the landscape right now and couple in some wind that just continues to dry out those fuels. Whether it's the grass or the large diameter trees, they're losing moisture, which makes them much more receptive to fire. And so we refer to that as their energy release component as to how much potential do they have to sustain a fire and combust. The fire restriction side of that comes as a management tool to control human behavior. And so we have two restrictions levels. There's stage one restrictions, which normally means no campfires unless in designated areas. And then stage two restrictions restrict that human activity even further and that there are no campfires period. But then it also restricts some of the activities that can occur off road, and the hours with which some kind of common forestry activities can occur. So no chainsawing between certain hours just because of the risk of a spark igniting igniting those fuels. Restrictions are typically deployed when we have a preponderance of human caused fires and where we need the human to change their behavior. And so we come at it with a little bit more of a of a forceful approach. I would expect reading the tea leaves, that at some point in the pretty near future, we will be asking the Commission to enact some level of restrictions. Thanks.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:09] So listening to this conversation, we would think that you worked for the Office of Fire Management. But fire isn't the only one we have. We got floods for sure, but other things as well. What all else does OEM prepare for?

Adriene Beck: [00:12:22] So we have a local hazard mitigation plan that we update every five years, and that's a way for us to analyze and profile the different hazards that we are most susceptible to. That then helps us kind of guide our efforts on how we're going to plan and prepare for those types of events, who we're going to work with, which stakeholders need to be engaged, and informing that planning process. But the big ones you've mentioned fire and flood. They historically come out as our top two hazards that not only happen relatively frequently, but also have the potential to impact numerous citizens as well as infrastructure. But others that really kind of are top of mind are we have an interstate and a railway that run across the county line from line to line rather. And so hazardous material spill would be very consequential. We have small micro hazardous material spills, you know, every week that don't necessarily rise to the level of a disaster or even an emergency for that matter, but always having that in the back of our mind as to how would we mitigate that hazard, and then how would we respond to it? What agencies need to be involved? What is the communication plan to notify the public? What are our evacuation routes out of this bowl? That that can be very hazardous from an air quality perspective. How do we.

Juanita Vero: [00:13:30] Practice?

Adriene Beck: [00:13:31] We do lots of what we call tabletop exercises or workshops, and then just regular functional exercises which involve, you know, making up sometimes a very wild scenario, which is not necessarily to test the individual components of that movie script necessarily, but it's designed to test all of the different components and all of the different players in the different roles that they play. And really, at the end of the day, it's about making sure that everybody understands what their role is, what resources they bring to the table, and how we integrate and collaboratively work together amongst different agencies, different jurisdictions to solve the problem.

Juanita Vero: [00:14:05] And then bringing it down to a closer level. How do you have this conversation with your family, like what's your evacuation plan or strategy like? I mean, you have young children. Like how how do you talk about this? Yeah.

Adriene Beck: [00:14:15] What do they say? It's always the barber's kid who needs a haircut.

Juanita Vero: [00:14:18] Oh, no.

Adriene Beck: [00:14:19] I just I just kidding.

Juanita Vero: [00:14:21] The cobbler's kid has no shoes, right? Right, right.

Adriene Beck: [00:14:24] No, I mean, it's very real. And, you know, we talk about who are the neighbors in, in our neighborhood that we know and trust that if for whatever reason, we become separated in event or in an emergency, these are the trusted people that we expect our eight year old to go to. And we've had those conversations not only with our eight year old, but with those trusted neighbors, just so they know, but also having a communications plan as to if we don't check in at at the time when we normally would check in, who's the next one that you're going to call and do you have those numbers and making sure that we can close those loops to make sure everybody's okay. And our evacuation plan is is relatively simple, you know, I mean, we'll we'll follow those directions as they're provided from those officials that know what they're talking about. But to that point, we've made a conscious decision to live in an area where that is less likely. So if you.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:08] Had some general emergency advice for people who live in Missoula County, what would it be?

Adriene Beck: [00:15:13] This seems like it should be just an easy question that just rolls off my tongue, because we talk about it all the time. But, you know, really, I think for us, the challenge is conveying the message of what people should be not necessarily worried about, but what they should be paying attention to, and being able to convey that in a way that resonates with them. And so being able to communicate with the vast sector of our county, whether you're, you know, a rural resident up in Condon or you live downtown and you're a university student and finding a way to to communicate in a way that that message resonates, that there are things that you should be thinking about. There are things that you should be prepared for, and they're not all the same. And really helping people to individualize that risk so that when, you know, when we think about an evacuation and I oftentimes will get up in front of a public meeting after we've already evacuated people or sometimes before. And so, you know, think about where you would go if you were evacuated, because my plan for you is a cot on a gym floor.

Adriene Beck: [00:16:09] Right. And that may not be an acceptable plan for you, but I get to check my box that I've provided you with shelter. And so thinking about, is that acceptable? Do I have my own plan A, my own plan B, and maybe, maybe Adriane's plan for me is like D if everybody if everything else fails. But really helping people with get the tools to to start having those dinner table conversations with their family about, well, let's let's start asking some what ifs, because the more what ifs you ask on a blue sky day, the easier things like unfold. When when the gray skies come in.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:39] Do you guys account for tourists? Just in the fact I'm thinking of where people are staying in Airbnbs. Or today I was. I sat outside in the shade and did some work out there, and I just couldn't help but notice the people who were walking by, multiple people speaking European languages, people who you could tell would ordinarily be at work, but were most definitely not at work, and wondering out loud about what was around the corner or where they should go go next. We have a lot of tourists in our county today. How does that fit into your planning?

Adriene Beck: [00:17:06] Absolutely. You know, fire is the convenient kind of example here in that and that we have a lot of preparedness and prevention fire professionals that that is their job is to try to figure out how to communicate the risk in real time because it evolves over the summer so that those individuals that are coming to visit our community from a foreign country or from a different neighboring county, that they can individualize that risk to, to them and what they plan to do. But reaching them is always a challenge. Technology is our friend in many ways. So, you know, there's kind of a robust network of public information campaigns that go out around fire danger and around fire prevention in places that aren't necessarily designed to reach your average everyday. 365 Missoula County resident. They are geared towards reaching those individuals that may only be here for a week and have never been here before, and how we do that across all risk is still, you know, a puzzle that we're trying to solve when we talk about emergency alerts in the event of a situation, whether it's a wildfire or a hazardous material spill or anything that poses that immediate risk to life, health and safety, we will use that integrated public alerts and warning system to issue those wireless emergency alerts. I'm trying not to use the acronyms that go with all the things, because that does reach those people that maybe don't even know what Smart911 is, don't need to know what Smart911 is. They're only here for three days, but they may happen to be here in a three day period where something really bad happens and we need to be able to get that message to them to take protective action for themselves. And so the way that wireless emergency alerts work is that if you are within kind of that alert notification area, which is determined by which cell phone tower your phone is pinging off of, they would receive that alert, but that, you know, telling people that something bad is happening right now is obviously not as good as being able to help them prepare for it.

Juanita Vero: [00:18:51] What's in a classic go bag? Speaking of preparedness, you.

Adriene Beck: [00:18:55] Know it really does need to be individualized to you. And so, you know, there's some things that are just obvious that you would want to think about as important papers and documentation that if they're in your house and you couldn't access your house, you would have to have them. Or if that your house was no longer there, that you would want to have those. So some of your insurance policies, important numbers nowadays, there's lots of ways to make those available on your phone or electronically available to you so that you don't have to have a physical copy prescription medication. If you have a prescription for medicine, you definitely want to take that with you, with the knowledge that you might not be able to access your house for a couple of days, you know, heaven forbid, a couple of weeks. And so thinking through, you know, what am I going to need for the things that I use every single day that are attached to this house? How could I replicate that outside of not being able to access that house?

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:38] Great.

Juanita Vero: [00:19:38] What's in your go bag, Slotnick?

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:41] Yeah, that go bag. Haven't put that bugger together yet.

Adriene Beck: [00:19:46] There are lots of good resources on our website where people can get a little bit more information about how to kind of personalize their go bags, especially if you have kids pets. Some additional items to think about so that make sure that everyone in your household is as comfortable as they can be in kind of those chaotic times.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:00] So given all the questions we've been asking, what have we forgotten to ask? What else should we have asked you?

Adriene Beck: [00:20:05] Well, I don't know. You've covered kind of the gamut of all of the things that we like to talk about and really just trying to have a, you know, across the table conversation with, with members of our community in a non-scary way to try to really help people make good plans for themselves, but also to give them the space and permission to be proactive about their emergency planning and kind of take the stigma away from being a prepper with a bunker. It really is about just those simple things of just having some what if conversations with your family and the best way to inform kind of, you know, we're not going to talk about like, what if, you know, the meteor falls on our house tomorrow, right? I mean, we try to make these realistic based on the hazards that you face. And so reading that local hazard mitigation plan is a good way for people to kind of understand where risk exists in our landscape based on where they live and where they recreate and what they do, but also to pay attention to those changing conditions that what you would have done to go camping with your family three weeks ago should look different than what you do to go camping with your family this weekend.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:10] Yeah, that's really good. Okay, to change gears because we're at the end. Oh, anything you run across in the world of of culture you feel like is worthy of relating anything that can be from a podcast, a book, a movie, a conversation with someone, a nugget of wisdom you've stumbled into.

Adriene Beck: [00:21:26] Oh man. I don't know that it's a nugget of wisdom, but I've read a really great book with my daughter and my three youngest nieces just two weeks ago. And and then they found the movie, but it was a it was called My Father's Dragon, and it was this book about this kid who's telling the story that obviously his father had told him, but in this very cute, fun way about just the most unimaginable things you can think of. And it was just really fun to watch seven, eight and a nine year old really just lap it up. And yeah, it's just it's those those fun moments where you can kind of make those books come alive.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:02] Oh great. Now I want to look.

Juanita Vero: [00:22:03] I also want to know what's on your nightstand reading.

Adriene Beck: [00:22:06] It's the summer. So, you know, mindless murder mysteries.

Juanita Vero: [00:22:10] Oh that's fantastic. I think the last time we talked about this, you're reading something about nuclear disaster. I was how to deal with it.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:16] This is a little lighter.

Adriene Beck: [00:22:18] This is a little lighter. It is the summer. And so we like to keep it a little light and it stays light longer.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:22] So just a little nuclear disaster.

Juanita Vero: [00:22:24] Be prepared. Get your go bags.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:25] Thank you, Adriane.

Juanita Vero: [00:22:26] Thank you so much. 

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:28] Adriane, I want to say one other thing. So I've had the pleasure of working with you for a handful of years, and you inspire so much confidence in this area every time we talk.

Juanita Vero: [00:22:35] Oh, ditto. I'm so glad you. We are in such good hands.

Adriene Beck: [00:22:38] Well, thank you so much. And that really is largely due to having a truly amazing team, not only with our kind of front line 911 dispatchers, but as well as all of the other folks that work in the emergency management side. 365 they're their rock stars and they make my job easy. Thank you, thank you.

Juanita Vero: [00:22:55] Thanks all.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:57] Thanks for listening to the agenda. If you enjoy these conversations, it would mean a lot if you would rate and review the show on whichever podcast app you use.

Juanita Vero: [00:23:05] And if you know a friend who would like to keep up with what's happening in local government, be sure to recommend this podcast to them.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:23:10] The agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners is made possible with support from Missoula Community Access Television, better known as MCAT, and our staff in the Missoula County Communications Division.

Josh Slotnick: [00:23:23] If you have a question or a topic you'd like us to discuss on a future episode, email it to communications@missoulacounty.us to find.

Juanita Vero: [00:23:31] Out other ways to stay up to date with what's happening in Missoula County, go to Missoula.co/countyupdates.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:23:38] Thanks for listening.