Poll: Most Sonoma County residents didn't get official fire warnings

Most of those warned of the firestorm found out from friends, family members and neighbors, according to The Press Democrat Poll.|

Press Democrat Poll

What type of warning did you receive about last October's fires? (Multiple responses allowed)

Official alert on my landline: 5 percent

Official alert on my cellphone: 17 percent

Neighbor warned me: 14 percent

Family member or friend warned me: 28 percent

Police or fire came to my home to warn me: 5 percent

None: 43 percent

Don't know: 1 percent

In the future, how would you like to be notified about a fire or other impending disaster?

Phone call: 31 percent

Text message: 30 percent

Email: 1 percent

Air raid siren: 28 percent

Other (specify): 7 percent

Don't know: 3 percent

Do you think Sonoma County is more prepared today to warn you about fires or disasters than it was last year?

Yes: 54 percent

No: 31 percent

Don't know: 15 percent

SOURCE: The Press Democrat Poll/David Binder Research

Few Sonoma County residents received official alerts telling them about the approaching October firestorm and many received no advance warning at all, according to The Press Democrat Poll.

Those who were warned more often found out about the unfolding natural disaster from friends, family members and neighbors, according to respondents in the telephone poll, which surveyed 500 registered Sonoma County voters in the first week of May.

Nonetheless, more than half of those surveyed in the poll said they feel the county is better prepared to warn them about disasters now than it was last year. And a majority of respondents - 59 percent - also said county officials provided effective leadership during the first week of the fires, which in Sonoma County destroyed nearly 5,300 homes and killed 24 people.

The poll results reinforce concerns local residents have voiced since the earliest part of the disaster, when many had to flee their homes in the middle of the night without any kind of advance notice from government officials or law enforcement.

At the same time, the survey indicates many agree with the steps county leaders have taken over the past seven months to address the failure in emergency warnings and improve dispatch operations that were unprepared for the unprecedented disaster.

“When you look at these sorts of things and you go through a disaster as severe as what happened in the county, you might expect a lot of anger or unhappiness with the general institutions,” said David Binder, whose San Francisco firm conducted the poll on the newspaper's behalf. “When you see like 60 percent of the county saying yes, they provided effective leadership, that impresses me as being a really positive finding.”

Warned by family, friends

Angel Edwards, who lived in Santa Rosa's Coffey Park neighborhood, told pollsters she got no formal notice as the Tubbs fire tore through northern Santa Rosa on the first night of the fires. It jumped six lanes of Highway 101 and destroyed 1,200 homes in Coffey Park, including hers.

“I started seeing red in the clouds all around us; the wind was so torrid,” Edwards, 35, recalled. “Something just told me in the pit of my stomach, ‘Go. Just go.'?”

By the time a friend called Edwards to tell her that Coffey Park was on fire, she had already packed the car. She, her husband and their three young children fled for their lives as huge fireballs rained down around them, she said.

Edwards was among the largest single group of respondents to a poll question that asked people what type of warning they had received about the fires. Respondents were allowed to provide multiple responses, and the question was not limited to those directly in the path of the flames.

Forty-three percent said they received no warning at all about the firestorm, including six massive fires and a half-dozen smaller blazes that erupted the night of Oct. 8 and burned simultaneously out of control across Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino and Lake counties.

A family member or friend warned 28 percent of respondents, and 14 percent said a neighbor alerted them.

Official alerts via cellphone were received by 17 percent of those who participated in the poll, while 5 percent received landline alerts and 5 percent said police officers or firefighters came to their home and warned them.

Sonoma County Supervisor Susan Gorin, who lost her Oakmont home on the third day of the fires, said the poll results echo conversations she's had with constituents and other North Bay fire victims over the last seven months.

“Thankfully, we had friends and neighbors that were notifying folks of the impending firestorm,” said Gorin, who was out of town when the wildfires first erupted.

“Often, it was when the people were awakened by the wind or branches dropping or noticed flickering flames, or even children or pets notifying their parents.”

In a February meeting of the Board of Supervisors that focused on emergency alerts, Gorin was pointed and emotional in suggesting that the county's failure to have a better warning system in place may have contributed to the fires' deadly toll.

“We could have saved lives if we'd had a better system of alerts,” she said at the time.

That meeting came in the wake of a state review and public scrutiny that exposed the county's lack of a coordinated system to locate and track the destructive fires and to warn people and direct them to safety - shortfalls that county supervisors have acknowledged.

But countywide, 59 percent of poll respondents said they felt the Board of Supervisors provided effective leadership in the first week of the fires, while 27 percent said they did not think so and 13 percent didn't know. Asked if the county was more prepared to warn residents about a disaster now than last year, 54 percent said yes, 31 percent said no and 15 percent didn't know.

The poll did not ask residents if their homes were affected by the disaster or if they had to evacuate. But respondents offered varying levels of confidence in county leaders depending on whether they received some kind of emergency alert.

Among respondents who got no warning, 52 percent said they felt the Board of Supervisors provided effective leadership in the firestorm, Binder said, a slight decrease from the overall survey pool. Among those who did receive a phone alert, supervisors' leadership rating jumped to about 70 percent, he said.

“That's pretty impressive,” Binder said. “The one thing we don't know is, of those who didn't receive a warning, how many didn't need one because they weren't in danger. That kind of mitigates it a little bit. But the ones that did get alerts were very pleased, especially the ones that got some kind of alert on their phones.”

Phone-based alerts

The Press Democrat Poll surveyed voters' opinions on a range of local issues, including the race for Sonoma County sheriff, illegal immigration and the cannabis industry. It is the first poll by the newspaper in 15 years.

The survey was conducted May 2 to May 7 and it reached 500 voters on their cellphones or landlines. Voters were targeted for inclusion in the poll if they voted in the November 2016 election and if they had cast a ballot in at least one other election since November 2012.

The margin of error was 4.4 percent.

Among respondents from the Santa Rosa area, which saw the heaviest losses among North Bay communities hit in the fires, the breakdown on emergency warnings was similar to the countywide results: 36 percent said they received no warning and 24 percent received landline or cellphone alerts, Binder said.

Poll respondent Thomas Hoex, who lives south of Santa Rosa city limits, recalled receiving some kind of phone-based “heads up” issuing warnings, given the speed of the initial firestorm.

“I don't see how they could have warned people about it,” said Hoex, whose home was not impacted. “I think they did all they could do.”

During the first 24 hours of the fire, the county used its opt-in SoCo Alert system to target more than 55,000 phone numbers, but records show fewer than 27,500 calls went through in a county of 502,000 residents. County officials also sent more than 3,500 text messages and nearly 2,800 emails in that time.

Separately, the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office sent 16,300 emails and more than 21,800 text messages through the opt-in Nixle alert system in the disaster's first day.

Edwards, the former Coffey Park resident, remains upset, however, that she didn't get an Amber Alert-style warning on her cellphone. Such alerts can be forced onto cellphones across wide and targeted geographic areas.

“We should have had some sort of an alarm just like that alarm that goes off on your phone,” Edwards said. “It's not like any other alarm. It's one that makes you get up and go, ‘What the heck is going on?' We should have had that.”

The county's emergency services manager at the time of the fires had decided a year before not to use the Amber Alert-style technology, known as Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), because he didn't think it could be targeted to an area smaller than the entire county. A post-fire review by the state Office of Emergency Services said that decision stemmed from a “limited awareness and understanding” of the system and “outdated information” regarding its technical capabilities.

County officials now say they would use widespread wireless alerts during another emergency, and they've expanded the number of people who have the ability to send those kinds of messages. Sheriff's Sgt. Spencer Crum said every dispatch supervisor at his agency now has the ability to send a WEA message, which they did not have before the October fires. The Sheriff's Office is in the process of getting every dispatcher trained in the system, which requires a two-hour class, Crum said.

Far fewer people had the ability to issue WEA messages when the fires broke out, according to Crum.

“We've gone from that type of a controlled system to more of a regional system where the people who are on duty working the event actually have the access to push the buttons,” Crum said.

REDCOM, the county's fire and medical dispatch center, has led an effort to improve dispatcher training by writing a new 911 script for response to massive wildfires in populated areas. Its dispatchers were overwhelmed and unprepared for the disaster, with few answers to give the hundreds of people calling their Santa Rosa headquarters in the chaotic first hours of the fires, The Press Democrat has reported.

The county is also considering whether to shake up the operations of its emergency services division, which is housed within the County Administrator's Office. At least some responsibilities of the division may move under the Sheriff's Office, a conversation supervisors are expected to have at their June 11 meeting.

Also June 11, supervisors are slated to consider a major report analyzing how the county's emergency operations center functions.

“I haven't seen it yet - as soon as I do, I'm sure I'll have much more to say about it - but I think we've done our due diligence in looking at what we need to do to be prepared for the next disaster,” said Supervisor Shirlee Zane, who was chairwoman of the board during the firestorm. “We can't afford to not do everything we can to turn over every single rock to make sure that we're protecting people.”

Desire for warning sirens

A combined 61 percent of participants in The Press Democrat Poll said they would like to be notified about a fire or other impending disaster through a phone call or text message. The next largest group, 28 percent, favored air-raid-style sirens, an option floated by county officials, city leaders and others.

Santa Rosa Mayor Chris Coursey said the city has included sirens in a request for federal hazard mitigation funds, but he's not sure “that's necessarily where we'll end up.”

“We need to have a discussion,” Coursey said. “First of all, where are we going to put them? Second of all, how are we going to use them? Third of all, how are people going to know what a siren means?”

The poll further found strong support for rebuilding the devastated Fountaingrove neighborhood in Santa Rosa's northeastern hills, even though the massive 1964 Hanly fire burned the same area. Sixty-nine percent of poll participants said residents should be allowed to rebuild there, compared to 23 percent who said they shouldn't; 6 percent who didn't know and 2 percent preferred not to say.

David Guhin, Santa Rosa's director of planning and economic development, noted the neighborhood is within the city's urban growth boundary. And new homes there won't be built to the same standards as when the neighborhood was developed decades ago: They'll need to conform to modern code requirements, which have stronger safeguards for such things as vent limitations, fire-resistant exterior siding and fire-resistant roof materials, he said.

Gorin, an ex-Fountaingrove resident, questioned in October whether the neighborhood should be rebuilt. Her former house there burned down as well.

Now, she thinks new homes should come to the area if people are willing to live there again.

“People suffered grievous losses, but this is where their neighborhoods are,” Gorin said. “People have a right to rebuild where they want to rebuild using fire-resistant materials, upgrades and defensible space around their houses. I think people who rebuild there are going to build much smarter than they did before.”

You can reach Staff Writer J.D. Morris at 707-521-5337 or jd.morris@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @thejdmorris.

Press Democrat Poll

What type of warning did you receive about last October's fires? (Multiple responses allowed)

Official alert on my landline: 5 percent

Official alert on my cellphone: 17 percent

Neighbor warned me: 14 percent

Family member or friend warned me: 28 percent

Police or fire came to my home to warn me: 5 percent

None: 43 percent

Don't know: 1 percent

In the future, how would you like to be notified about a fire or other impending disaster?

Phone call: 31 percent

Text message: 30 percent

Email: 1 percent

Air raid siren: 28 percent

Other (specify): 7 percent

Don't know: 3 percent

Do you think Sonoma County is more prepared today to warn you about fires or disasters than it was last year?

Yes: 54 percent

No: 31 percent

Don't know: 15 percent

SOURCE: The Press Democrat Poll/David Binder Research

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