Response to Grand Jury Report Form Title: Sonoma County Emergency Evacuation Plans Re'o ort

Most of Sonoma County's major evacuation routes are incapable of accommodating predictable evacuation traffic in a timely manner. sonoma county Public lnfrastructure partially disagrees with this finding The County has demonstrated the capacity to evacuate effectively through coordinated planning, early warning, and adaptive traffic management, such as during the 2019 Kincade Fire. The success of mass evacuations is reliant on several factors, including road design , early alert systems, timely public response, and dynamic traffic operations. This challenge is faced by alljurisdictions in California, as no transportation network is designed to fully support large- scale, last-minute evacuations. Many Sonoma County roads, especially in hilly rural areas, are narrow and winding due to topography and standards during the periods in which they were constructed. These characteristics present inherent limitations when moving large volumes of traffic rapidly during emergencies. To address network limitations, the Department of Emergency Management collaborates with communities in unincorporated areas for evacuation exercises. These exercises help community members become familiar with the evacuation process, along with several routes out of their neighborhood. Community evacuation exercises have taken place since zOLg, with previous Revised Jlune2022 Response to GJ Report Form communities including Cavedale, Grove Street/Diamond A, Mill Creek, Fitch Mountain, Sea Ranch, Occidental, and Palomino.

Organized community-based communications networks are a proven emertency resource yet remain only partly integrated into county and city emergency operations and communications infrastructures and require additional investment to provide county-wide coverage. Sonoma County Public lnfrastructure partially agrees with this finding. We recognize that non-traditional communications networks, such as General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS), Radio Amateur Communications Service (RACES) and Auxiliary Communications Service (ACS) are essential complements to conventional communication systems that increase reach and provide redundancy in times of emergency. The County is actively involved in implementing and expanding these low-cost, high-impact communication platforms, which have already proven their value during events such as the 2023 floods and severe winter storms. The County's ACS program has over 60 volunteers, along with an amateur radio repeater system and a non-repeater system to communicate locally, regionally, statewide, nationally, and worldwide. ACS has a net control station within the county's Emergency Operations Center with access to all amateur radio frequencies for FCC-Iicensed technicians, general, and extra- class licenses, along with equipment to support emergency communication to Sacramento to Cal OES's ACS/RACES radio room. The County's ACS program maintains relationships to provide emergency radio support at fire stations, law enforcement stations, hospitals, EMS stations, command posts, emergency shelters, along with other critical locations as needed. Finally, the County, in collaboration with ACS and our community's GMRS radio operators, developed a concept of operations for integrating ACS operators and GMRS operators in net control and message handling between the two radio systems. Future collaborations between ACS and GMRS are in progress.