Local Hazard Mitigation Plan Town Hall Meeting

. Good evening everyone and welcome to the cbs evening news first town hall meeting local hazard mitigation plan. And this is an informational for an opportunity for you to ask questions and to see what doing specifically for updating our current hazard mitigation plan and what does this mean like introduce myself? My name is tied to go on the emergency management coordinator for the city that's going to and in the room with us today we have chief avery who is the fire chief and also on the planning and victor lopez who is the superintendent for public works and he is also on the planning committee as well. So what is the purpose of this meeting is to review and discuss the local hazard mitigation plan and really go what it is and I have a small powerpoint presentation that I really want to want to bring up to you so you can see what we're talking about. So what is mitigation? It's a kind of interesting right? So mitigation specifically is just fixing problems as we find them before they become problems. So for instance in public works area so say we maybe a or something like that that needs to be fixed. We'll go forth and be proactive ,put a wall there retaining wall so the doesn't fall into somebody's. That's the concept of mitigation in a nutshell. So mitigation for every dollar that we save or that we spend in mitigation efforts saves between 6 to $14 in our recovery efforts. So preparedness, prevention and mitigation those three areas actually end up saving residents money and taxpayer money. And so it's important for us to do mitigation work and also when we you guys pay attention to things that are happening with some grant opportunities. We did a bolton brace program here that was a grant program and they're doing the retrofitting in your home for every dollar that you spend on retrofitting your home for earthquake preparedness saves you $4 in in avoided losses in the future. So what are the benefits of mitigation. So we do have reduction in deaths property repair costs, additional living expenses that don't occur. In other words maybe you have to rent a home or something if something happens to your home. Direct indirect business interruption. Right. And so working with local businesses create business continuity plans so we can reduce the interruption in business lost the services to the community. So as a we look at mitigating issues that are associated with city and city buildings so we can continue to serve the public after a crisis occurs. And then also oddly enough and it also reduces the need for urban search and rescue and rescue costs after an happens. And so when we think about an event right, the one that we want to talk about the most here a natural disaster is earthquake and this is where we where we can do a lot of prevention and we've seen how earthquake prevention in buildings, retrofitting buildings has actually come to play and helped us out in this nation. So if you compare say an earthquake that happens here in california to say an earthquake that happens in other countries a small earthquake do a lot of damage where it doesn't do the same amount of damage here. So retrofit is working. Um, sorry about the slide. So how are we doing this? Well, we have some new requirements so the local mitigation planning book handbook for fema fema has put some new requirements into what are mitigation and what they're looking at. And one of the things that we really need to focus on here in our planning is working with at risk and vulnerable and it's kind of a squishy term, right, because we vulnerable populations what does that mean at risk populations? What does that mean? Well, it can go anywhere from elderly population on a fixed income. Right. Which we would really call are vulnerable population because if they have damage done to their home, it's going to be hard for them to pay to have fixed all the way. and we can also discuss vulnerable populations the homeless population. Foreign language that maybe we might not be able to reach out conventional ways. Those are the populations that we're talking about and we're to do a heavy focus on reaching out to those populations, make sure that they are part of this. And so we have a holistic approach to how we're looking at hazard mitigation. And so we are reaching out to the community as as a medium like we're having today to see what we can do for and how we can add your concerns into this planning. So the planning so we can organize the planning process into a couple of different. One is we have planning team meetings with about four of those and we have community planning meetings which we're doing today. We're to have four of these and then once we have the plan written and we have a contractor who is actually writing the plan right now what's the plan is ready and ready to go. We're going to put it back out to the community for review. Under the review will have survey that's sent out to everybody in the community can participate in this and I really highly ask and encourage you to participate. This survey will go out you will take will be reviewed again and your comments and concerns are going to be heard and then we will take those and put those into the plan as well. Once the plan is accepted through process. Then this will go up to the state of california excuse me and go to state of california. See california will then approve the plan at their level and then it goes out to fema. Fema takes a look at this plan, will approve the plan as well and then it comes back to city council for final approval and adoption and. That's that's the basis of it. So we have our planning our assess the risk and capabilities. I think that's a critical step in to that process. Right. So we have taken a look at and victor lopez, I want to put a shout out to you, sir, for your team for going out really taking a look at some of the hazards that we're really looking at now when we talk about hazards. There's two sets of hazards we have are our focus hazards that are natural disasters. So droughts, floods, geological hazards, hazard material released due to natural hazards and seismic activities. Right. Those are the the critical areas that we're looking at for natural hazards and then we go into of concern that we're going to talk about but that's not natural. So there's two areas and so the other area here is like aircraft incidents for instance, hazardous material release that's not caused by a disaster, a natural disaster and then human caused and there could be more. Right. And this is kind of why we want to have these community to get your input to what you think should be things that we should be focusing on and if we can focus on this and take a look at it, there's a very narrow definition that fema has set that we can really work on. So there might be some things out here that you're concerned about and that saying that you shouldn't be concerned about it but we have to stay within for this particular plan within that narrow band of what fema's at and then again adopt an the plan and that's the basis they're implementing the plan and which is critical for this and what this does when we implement the plan is it also opens us up as a city for additional grant funding coming from fema to help us mitigate those problems. So that's why this is a very important plan to through. So we talk about the community strategy a little bit and so we will you'll be seen shortly through email and through outreach and we a public outreach program where we're at the farmer's market on thursday to give information out. You can go over there, talk to us there. You talk to me there personally . We'll have a qr code there that you can scan to go and put more information into the surveys and to really have that that engagement. We're also going to be pushing stuff through our social media through the emergency preparedness survey. Like I said, the review planning of the plan to the leadership team and then the public forums like that. So we'll have four of these total three after today I want to discuss the community lifelines here for a minute because this is what at the end of the day our our hazard assessment is going to be looking at and what this means are the cumulative claims are critical areas that keep a city functioning a community functioning after and during a crisis. So we have safety and security . We have a food, water and shelter medical oops sorry medical and fuel communications ,transportation and course you know, hazardous materials and new this powerpoint will be available online as well if you guys want to take a look it closely. Those are the areas that we're looking at. It's the lifelines were set up by fema and these are the guidelines that we are using for our planning process. So how do we identify hazards? This is 2020 county los angeles hazard mitigation plan. We'll look at what the county is saying where we have issues we look at what can oas says are issues. We look at the what we're looking at specifically as we we look around our city specifically internally and through the geologic geological society. So those areas that are saying these are our problems we, take a look at them, we're going to rate them. And so when we say we're rating the hazards not like saying hey, which one's better than the other? It's saying what is the impact on the community? Right. So let's say for instance an earthquake all right. It's we'll say a medium probability which means we're not having one every year or every day although we did have one today, you know, in the size of the earthquake. However, if it's a say a 6.5 or greater, it's going have a significant impact on on our on our community and that's typically the impact means what services can we provide for you? Right. So when we're looking at significant impact, that's how we measure how long is a city going to how long our doors a city hall are going to be shut so we can't provide services if we have this earthquake. So that's how we measure significant impact on how we can provide services. So when you see that on the matrix and what will push out afterwards that that's what that means. So for us the 2024 hazard mitigation hazards are looking at earthquake flood disease whether for extreme heat drought, hurricanes either because we did actually have one hurricane hillary if you guys kind of that one and then tropical storms which we just had in FEBRUARY had significant impact on our community and then tsunamis. So we're looking at existing and future and increasing the resilience and that's critical . Part of what we're doing here is to increase the resilience and the readiness our of our city. So we're looking at regulatory issues such codes, ordinances, policies, laws, right. And then using administrative tools and techniques for what we do hear from staff as what we can do at the sentencing law. But administrative rules that we could put out there to help and tools that we can help with making sure that you are taken care of. We're looking at financial issues specifically how does it impact us financially with taxes and and things like this. And then education outreach and so what doing again like our thursday evening things are at the farmers market the community outreach fire safety fund safety preparedness and then we also have volunteer opportunities through our community emergency response team, the cert program and through our ham radio operators which is the ricci's program and those also help with the community outreach education. So how do we develop the we have our goals as a coordinate strategy with the general plan and the public safety element. So we have to look at the current safety element. Do we have to update that as well? And that goes into community development side of things and planning infrastructure element? How does our infrastructure is impacted? How are we working with say like the mta or metro specifically with our infrastructure there and capital improvement programs and then a comprehensive range of actions that will reduce the impacts of the identified hazards and so this comes in to where like public works and as a heavy lift here and how do we fix those potential hazards that we that we register. We talked about this a little bit already the approval implementation the formal review process is critical and in this kind of is critical to understand is fema's rules have changed over the last 6 to 8 months and there's kind of a flux here and. So our plan has to be written in a way that fema wants to see it and has to address the issues. And so that's what we're hard on right now to make sure that we're meeting those rules and regulations are set by fema so we will get approved and that's it's a process and a half. So you please everybody bear us as we're going through this and we'll definitely keep you updated on where we're at with that part. And so people issue the approval pending application and then city council adoption and an implementation planning here is not we just don't put this into a binder and like leave it we use this as the bible if you will to do our work right. so in picking up victor since in the room you know so and he's looking at things that he needs to fix right takes a look at our plan says okay where does this meet this threshold and and we can funding for it can we use this plan. And that's how that's how this plan to do so it's an operational plan. It's not just a binder sitting on somebody's desk. So I think we're done with the powerpoint presentation portion of this and that's that's the planning process we have. And so I want to open it up and I we only have a few people live in the room and if you guys are listening on tv you can please email me at tebow at el segundo dot org I'd be happy to answer any any questions that you have there but in the room any comments or questions you have specifically on our plan, the focus areas and how we're moving forward? Sir the increase in taxes at some point was funded so the question do I anticipate any raising taxes or fees fund this mitigation program? No, it's the opposite. There's actually this plan once we get it done we'll actually increase funding opportunities from fema. So when we have issue say for instance well everybody has seen the on a that they kind of slid during the rainstorms the mitigation funds will pay for that and not just the for the area where it's foul where the fell we could actually get a wall paid for pending that we go through all the steps properly right not promising anything but we could actually get a wall paid for that would take care that entire slopes that would never happen again and it doesn't cost us anything . Well let me rephrase that doesn't cost as much. There is a little bit of match funds but we do this through a match funds are kind of interesting point there's normally a 25% match but it's normally done through stuff that we're already like our our time on the job the equipment that we're using and things like that. So there's no direct money coming out of the budget necessarily. It's normally used in-kind match so and that's how I would start. Good question. Thank you. Any other questions? Yes. My analogy when I saw something like that if you want so the question was are there any strings attached to the money coming in from us? Do we have to do any federal programs because we're taking money? I'm going to answer this in a weird way not at this time. I'm not saying that in an administration can't come in and change that. But at this point. I mean the only strings attached is that we have to identify beforehand and and you know, say what we're looking at and that that's it. But there's no there isn't any other additional recut to recovery dollars. Do we have to do whatever you want whatever good, bad or indifferent you know what the federal government wants us to do? No. There are no strings attached at this time. Any other questions, sir? One from the business industry perspective. You know, we're just required to develop an emergency action plan. Yes. When this kind of thing gets finalized against building approvals, creating new requirements that businesses should be aware it shouldn't it shouldn't it shouldn't creating new requirements. However and again I'm going to catch this a little bit however if it pertains like for instance that new new construction. Right. Like existing construction probably not but new construction MAY have something to to say earthquake safety issues and we see this all the time anyway. Right. So as we upgrade building codes specifically an event or whatever, you know so, so you might see that happen to new construction but it really shouldn't impact existing structures as they shouldn't because I got to give that a little bit of a sort of out of the oh great question. So the question how does the sba which the small business administration help businesses? well, it doesn't just help local businesses. It also helps local homeowners or residents for that matter. And what they do is an earthquake or a disaster. They'll come and they'll give either low interest or no interest loans and in some cases grants to communities, to business owners and, to homeowners to to fix their homes. Um and I want to kind of put this in although it's not really part of what we're necessarily talking about today one of the things that we need to stress as preparedness and to become a disaster community is proper insurance for your homes whether it's your earthquake insurance or flood insurance. These things you can you can get them and if you're under fixed income there are programs out there to to help you get those insurances and then anything that the insurance doesn't cover um the small business administration MAY give and it depends on how your insured MAY give up to a 0% loan or grant for you to be able to fix your your property. But it's case by case know how that works. But that's a good question. Thank you. It's been few the question is but how do we ensure homes with all these insurance companies clean? That's a that's a policy question that has to be taken up at at the state level. I have opinion on that but it's realistically it's a state level that's what the whole question and the other yes, ma'am I think even the caught on that coverage is whether even if it's not covered by payment system so so yeah so there's there's two points like I said earlier so we have but the that we we must cover in this plan that are required by fema are the natural hazards right so we're going to focus on at the beginning of the planning process on those natural hazards and then then we can add in the areas that are human caused or technological disasters into into the plan as well. And fema doesn't really care about those necessarily what I mean by that is they're just like that's nice information to have but we need to really focus on those natural hazards first because that's what they're that's the area where we can actually mitigate. Right. So for instance if we talk about aircraft accidents right ,that's something that we're concerned about for sure. Right that's not that I'm concerned about, you know, being so close to the airport. However, there aren't like we can't use works to go and create a bubble around the city to try to fix that problem. Right. But with a landslide or slide we can actually go forth use these pre dot pre-disaster dollars into fixing that. Does that make sense? So you you have absolutely no insur mitigation efforts or a plan to cover interruption and utility service like that's and we mean by that is like so for instance if it was um a downed power line due to somebody crashing a car right that's an example that's not really covered on how we can do this but we can use mitigation into helping like wind resistant power lines or even potentially in some areas depending on well this is more for high fire risk areas and that doesn't really count for us for in el segundo necessarily. But look at high fire risk areas. They help pay for lines to be buried right. So because it's a super expensive to bury line so so you know that's the kind of where where I mean not directly but on the water issue yeah for sure water and natural hazards so for instance we could go retrofit sewer and water lines for earthquake. Right. So we're looking at sewer water saying okay, these are older water lines in the water department says hey, you know, we need to this and then we can go sure. And we can fix those water lines with funds because we're retrofitting it for earthquake . Does that make sense? So those are the services that we're going to want to find out there how do we get electricity, water? Yeah. So yeah, so that's a good question. So we we are actually working on on ways to prepare for long term power outages now it might not be citywide but we can have like one of the things that we'd like to do is have hubs too where people can come to charge their phones, get information and get get some power for for a short period time potentially, have a cooling center set up that run through solar to if it's a hot day type thing if during the earthquake that there's no bringing people into cooling centers. So we're looking at those are of the ideas that I'm actually leaning forward working on looking for funding for those things as well. So that would fall definitely underneath the underneath this. Now I could I do a a city wide solar grid for for power probably not but we could definitely do hubs to be able to help the residents and visitors and and businesses that are here too to be able to still function in some fashion um yes two point this is a state rule not not a city rule . They're now getting rid of the idea of doing gasoline generators so but you can do you can do solar generators and yeah but but you could buy yeah so yeah I would recommend getting them now if you want to buy one so but yeah generators are definitely something and I'm talking about more that that's a question to be a be above my pay grade I think as I through development you know chief like what how big they can get as far as generators go I think what we purchase you know generators for emergency response is part of our decision about who's using that so you know for sure large scale medium to large scale generators but two things one a location where people for everyone we're not talking about we do have we power those generators to of these medium scale so I'm not sure what the city code is necessarily for having like if you bought like say a full house generator which are available right like through gas you could do natural gas generators that way I don't know what the city code is with that maybe I can I could reach to michael island and could you email and I'll find out what the code is that and get back to you on that like okay that might be tricky. Other things a very good question and so the question was how do we get fema funds and who's eligible for fema funds? I'm going to paraphrase that close enough. Okay. So this is for the audience that they MAY not be able to hear you. So okay, so the ema has funding available for schools and churches nonprofit organizations that can apply for those and there are absolutely correct there are funds available for emergency generators and things along those lines for those but they have to go through a grant application process and they open periodically. They just had one open not so long ago I know what the status is. They closed pretty quickly so it's normally open for like six months. They closed it and then no reopen and again. So it's kind of keep an eye on fema, the fema website for that. And so there are there are grants available for nonprofits if any. And again, if you want to reach out to me, I'm more than happy to put you in the right direction too. It would not necessarily be part of this point though what we but we could discuss it in the plan you know, if there's something that you guys think that's very important we could put that in an annex and discuss that in the point. Any other questions? Yeah, but in terms of around like like 3.99 I, I, I read more about the sector. Yeah 99 that you know there might be some in this part of environmental protection is part of that I'm not really sure what you're referring to we could talk about that offline but yeah so environmental protection is part of the hazard mitigation plan. Anything else I can protect say a few words so we want to the process that oh yes yes that's going to be my it's coming up on my on the agenda so the question from chief was to go and explain the timeline for completion and yes timeline completion we right now we're on the clock if you will so we hired a consultant and we started the process and so we have about a year to finish this complete plan from first start to finish and so my goal though is to have a at least draft plan coming out by the fall by and that's my goal. So that's what we're that's we're reaching for and to have it in everybody's hands from our committee have it in everybody's hands for review by by the end of SEPTEMBER OCTOBER and then have it up fema by by the end of OCTOBER and then not sure how long once it gets there there's a you to get to the state. They can see the fema. There's a sometimes a delay in the process. So it's about a year long process right now. We'd like to expedite that as much as we can. But that's that's kind of we're on the timeline and the community engagement is a super critical part of what we're doing and so those of you that aren't in the room today when we have our next community meeting, I'd really like to invite you to come here so we can have more about what we're doing and then to be able to put this into our plan and discuss what are the real concerns we that we have for the fire hazard mitigation things that you would like to see us do on that side of it. I want to kind of get into this going to close off here with some disaster tips. All right. Because this is what this is about. And so my goal as emergency manager for the city is to really create a a resilient or robust disaster resilient community almost to the point of what we see antifragile and that starts with you start with the community member. It starts with your neighbors and your neighbors. In the case of a disaster. So as we share tips with you and you come to our hour to the booth during at the farmer's market and you get some tips and stuff like that, share that with your neighbors. Know I tell people all the time the best way to for disasters is shake the hand of your next door neighbor and make a friend because at the end of the day when a disaster occurs they're going to be the that are helping you. You're identifying the hazards in your neighborhood, the identified hazards specifically that MAY impact home and create emergency kits that are based upon maybe the that we're facing and to develop that household plan and disaster planning for your home. It's going to be unique to each home how you evacuate and practice that evacuation and where you meet if you're going to have you should have an offsite meeting place in case you can't get home and practice that you can do it is not to be too scary. We could do in a fun way especially if you have kids you can make it a good time supporting neighbors and vulnerable populations. I'll tell you the story of a that we helped prepare in my other jurisdiction I worked before here and there was an elderly lady and she was pretty much shut in and the people in the neighborhood didn't really realize that she was there. They had this neighborhood meeting for preparedness and they were able to help her get out of her home on a regular basis to go grocery shopping, to go to the doctor's office and stuff like this. And they had community members that in the neighborhood check on her on a regular basis. It doesn't have to be something that's drastic such as an earthquake. And so the idea of helping I think that's critical this help it's helping support your neighbors and the community that we are and then renewing or talk about this your insurance and the volunteering opportunities we have a open coming up on MAY 11th at the fire department would love see you there at the open house we have the cpr saturday I think that's sold out as of this afternoon so but please back and see if anybody has dropped out of that training and then we have on MAY 31st of this year we're doing community emergency response team training and that's a lot of fun and even if you don't decide to volunteer or take the training you can take the information home and you can find that information on the fire department website and I'd love to have you there in the class as well. So I'll put up for last remarks for anybody and victor like the same thing or chief and night I appreciate what one part of carmen and other internal staff that really take the I'm kind of bringing this together one of my first time going to be involved is meeting with them. You know exactly how to do it together so you know that, we are working together. We're going to have thank you very much, victor. I did it. You start chief avery the fire chief also going to fire department. Hi everyone. Thank you very much for allowing me to speak. I'm I just to share how important this process is to the city of el segundo and this is an approach that needs to come from the whole community is what we call it. That's every stakeholder that we have not only internally from every department head and our city leadership our mayor, mayor pro tem and council but our community members, our business owners and, our schools and our faith based organizations because is truly a process that identifies the hazards and mitigation efforts that we will sustain for years to come and will also allow us to to apply for grants from fema that will help us rebuild in case of a disaster. And I do have to say that your emergency manager todd is incredibly experienced. His knowledge skill ability is above most nationally recognized and we very thankful to have him here the city of el segundo. Thank you. Thank you for thank you for the kind words. i'd like to now bring the meeting to a close. I appreciate who came out today. I know it's a date beautiful day like today I coming out to a meeting is probably not first thing on your on your list and for those that are home that are watching please come out next time. I'd love to talk to you in person and please get involved with what we're doing here with the city, with our volunteer opportunities. Thank you very much everybody and have a wonderful rest here. You