San Luis Obispo County Grand Jury • 2014-2015 • Agency Response
Response to: Challenges_in_Enforcing_Coastal_Vacation_Rentals

County of San Luis Obispo Board of Supervisors Agenda Item Transmittal (3) Contact/phone (1) Department (2) Meeting*

Published: April 21, 2015 8 pages
Ver PDF original

Findings and Recommendations 2 findings

F1
The community of Cambria faces a severe fire threat due to a combination of environmental, geographical and demographic factors. We agree with this finding. The Board also notes that a number of agencies are working together to address the threat in a cooperative manner. These include Cal Fire/County Fire Department, the Cambria Community Services District Fire Department, the County Public Works Department, and the County Planning and Building Department, among others. In addition, information on the situation has been and will continue to be passed on to the Governor's Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) by the County Office of Emergency Services (County OES). This helps ensure officials within and throughout various State agencies have been and continue to receive situation updates and thus remain aware of the threat. The intent is to keep State agencies at the Sacramento level aware of the situation in the event additional resources, including funding, becomes available.
Related Recommendations (1)
R1
The Cambria Community Services District should request that a local emergency be declared regarding the fire risk and forward it to the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors for ratification. The recommendation has been implemented. On March 26, 2015, the Cambria Community Services District Board of Directors adopted resolution 08-2015 declaring a state of emergency and requesting the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors to immediately declare a local emergency pursuant to the procedures and authority contained in Government Code Sections 8630 et seq.
F2
The plan for public evacuation in the event of a wildland-urban interface fire or other emergency is not well understood or publicized within the community. We agree with this finding, although we also note the information is publicly available and efforts such as the active Cambria Community Emergency Response Team demonstrate the availability of public involvement to be prepared for any emergency, including evacuations. And, fire and other preparedness information have been distributed throughout the community in the past. £ However, we agree that information may not be well understood or publicized on a widespread basis although that is difficult to measure. We understand local agencies are moving forward on making efforts to publicize the information, including preparedness events in Cambria and we applaud those efforts
Related Recommendations (1)
R2
If the Cambria Community Services District fails to request a local emergency, the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors should do so on its own. This recommendation has been implemented. On March 11, 2014 the Board of Supervisors proclaimed a local emergency as a result of the current drought. Included in the proclamation resolution is reference to fire conditions and water supplies being threatened in a number of communities as it relates to firefighting needs. Actions to mitigate fire danger and response have been moving forward, not only in Cambria, but in other areas of the county as well, and have been shared and discussed with the County Drought Task Force. Additionally, information specific to the Cambria fire threat has been provided to the Governor's Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) and has been shared with the State Drought Task Force and Cal OES executive staff as well. Thus, the status of the Cambria fire threat has and will continue to be a high priority issue shared with State agencies. In this way, the County continues to demonstrate to the State the critical nature of the situation and will draw attention to this threat should State or Federal financial assistance become available. In summary, the proclamation of local emergency adopted by the County Board of Supervisors on March 11, 2014 has already fulfilled the Grand Jury's recommendation. OTHER DEPARTMENT INVOLVEMENT/IMPACT The Grand Jury met with CAL FIRE, Cambria Community Services District (CCSD), CCSD Fire Department and San Luis Obispo County Community Fire Safe Council (SLO Fire Safe Council). It also interviewed two former local fire chiefs. The Grand Jury reviewed a number of relevant documents, including organizational websites, National Fire Protection Association guidelines, CCSD Fire Department planning and strategy documents, Cambria FD general plan, and the wildland-urban interface fire (WUI fire) pre-plan for the Cambria area. In addition, the Grand Jury attended three separate student team presentations at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo related to the topic of this Grand Jury report. FINANCIAL CONSIDERATIONS There are no financial considerations associated with this item. RESULTS This response will meet the legal requirements and time frames for responding to a Grand Jury report with findings and recommendations.

* This report's PDF did not contain easily extractable text and required Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for analysis. There may be minor errors in the extracted findings and recommendations due to OCR limitations with scanned documents.