‘What If’ Tests Disaster Planning—And It Works!

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
This article was published in the Central Oregonian of Prineville, Oregon, in May 2006

County Residents Can Have Confidence If Disaster Strikes

What if… ?

That’s the question that occupies the days and nights of one, not-so-well known unit of county government, the emergency management division of the office of the Crook County sheriff.

What if a rapid snow melt overtopped a dam ?

What if the bird flu virus mutates to allow human-to-human transmission ?

What if a wildfire forced the need for a mass evacuation of a large neighborhood ?

What if, indeed.

The last few weeks have been an opportunity to test just how well we in Crook County are prepared to address the frightening prospect of a ‘‘What If ’’ that becomes all too real.

All of us in local goverment recently have been keeping a nervous eye on water levels in the Ochoco Reservoir and to a lesser extent the Prineville Reservoir. If you don’t know why, chances are you have moved here since 1998. If you lived here in 1998, you remember full well what happed over Memorial Day that year.

A freak storm stalled over the Ochoco mountains, sending a tremendous rush of water down the mountains into Ochoco Lake. The reservoir, which was full for the upcoming irrigation season, overtopped. The resulting wall of water damaged about 500 homes near Ochoco Creek in Prineville. Local government and resources were quickly overwhelmed. Things were only slightly better after a Presidential disaster declaration made state and federal help available.

None of the events of 1998 have been forgotten in 2006 by those of us in local government who recently saw water levels starting to rise and rain continuing to fall. Thus, we all pretty much simultaneously contacted Russ Rhoden, the beleaguered head of the Ochoco Irrigation District, to find out what we should worry about.

Foruntately, we all found out that Russ, who was here for the previous flood, was as on top of the situation as any manager could be. With the District pouring water out of both reservoirs as fast as possible, there was little left to do to manage the water flow. That was the good news. The bad news was that despite the best efforts of the irrigation district, the water was still coming into the reservoirs about twice as fast as it was running out. At one point, we calculated that if the situation didn’t change, Ochoco Dam would overtop in about 15 days.

Time for Plan B.

Plan B is in the capable hands of an affable and experienced sergeant in the sheriff’s office, Russ Wright. Previously, Plan B, was managed by another very competent deputy who went on to experience other facets of law enforcement named Brandon Smith. Brandon, in turn, inherited a program built by Wayne Inman, a police chief retired to Prineville. These three since 2001 with the full backing and encouragement of the Crook County Court and Crook County sheriff have given us in this county an emergency mangement program unequalled in any other county east of the Cascades, including Deschutes County.

At least on paper it’s a good program. Now we were about to find out if the program would work in practice. And work it did.

Within hours of ascertaining that conditions for a possible flood seemed to be coalescing, the emergency management division started the wheels of emergency response turning at high speed:

An emergency declaration was readied for use at a moment’s notice requesting assistance from other state and federal agencies. Typed, ready to go and pre-signed, in the event of an actual emergency, it would only have had to be dated and faxed to be activated. That would have instantly started money and resources flowing into Crook County to meet emergenyc management needs.

The local health department, within a day, commandeered from every Central Oregon agency serving special-needs populations the names of individuals with special needs—people on home health or hospice and people with chronic health conditions—who might live in a floodpath. Contact information and evacuation routes were mapped and plans made to identify critical evacuations should they become necessary.

The Crook County School District was notified of possible flood conditions and asked to be prepared to cancel school if flood waters had continued to rise. The District was also tremendously helpful in assuring the county of the availability of its school bus fleet if a large-scale evacuation had become necessary.

The GIS department of the county (GIS stands for Geographic Information Systems and is the braintrust for computer-aided county mapping and technology) swung into action with a real-time test of the county’s recently developed and unique autodialer system. This program allows the county to notify nearly simultaneously by telephone residents of the entire county or portions of the county of a pending emergency. The test was a great success, with the autodialer atempting contact with 190 homes deemed to be in the floodpath. And that’s just in the 7 minutes it was allowed to run ! Of those attempted contacts, all but five turned out to be current numbers, and the autodialer connected with 78 percent of the homes it tried to reach (The autodialer obviously can’t work if you don’t pick up the phone and you don’t have an answering machine.) To make sure all phone lists are current, the GIS department followed up with a download from Qwest of updated phone numbers.

Emergency call lists were rapidly updated and staff put on high alert to provide 24-hour coverage and be available to respond immediately in the event of an emergency. Media contact lists were updated to ensure clear lines of communication with the public.

The City of Prineville was brought into the discussion and joined in enthusiastically. Not only did the police department demonstrate leadership in preparing to respond to a potential emergency, but the efforts of the public works department to drain the city’s lagoon system paid immediate dividents by increasing the storage capacity for stormwater and reducing the threat that raw sewage might spill into the Crooked River such as happened in 1998.

School District personnel helpfully offered to cancel school as needed in the event of a likely emergency and made the entire school bus fleet available as needed to assist in any large-scale evacuation.

In all, about 40 individuals from 20 agencies attended a pre-planning meeting to prepare for a potential flood. The County, City, Schools and the irrigation district were there, of course, as were emergency responders such as police, sheriff, state police, fire, ambulance and Red Cross volunteers. ODOT attended as did the Oregon National Guard. The ususal ‘‘turf ’’ battles weren’t anywhere to be found as agencies worked harmoniously to assign tasks to those most capable of carrying them out, regardless of uniform color, and to make contingency plans to effectively manage disaster.

In the end, it was all for nothing. Good water management by the Ochoco Irrigation District, a drop in temperatures and dry weather slowed the water release.

That was a relief for everyone, but I don’t regret the preparation. What I saw in 2006 was a marked contrast to 1998. While there was nothing good that came out of Sept. 11 and Katrina, they definitely sharpened local government’s edge in planning for emergency response. What I saw in early April was a local government fully prepared in the event of an actual emergency to make the most of the resources it has to mitigate the impact of potential disaster as much as possible.

We’ll never be perfect, and managing an actual disaster is as much about responding to the things you didn’t plan for as it is implenting the plans you have, but having seen the preliminary steps to a disaster kick in like clockwork in real time, I can say I’ve never been more proud of Prineville. I hope we never have to use what we’ve learned, but if we do, I’m confident we’re as ready as any local government our size out there.