Contra Costa County Fire Protection District (Con Fire), the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office of Emergency Services, and the City of Walnut Creek announces the successful conduct of a historic, first-time evacuation exercise in the Walnut Creek community of Rossmoor on Sunday, May 15.
The exercise was designed to evaluate and improve evacuation procedures for residents of the Rossmoor community and test the County’s new Zonehaven digital evacuation tool for first responders. At 7 a.m. Sunday, the Contra Costa County Community Warning System (CWS) sent a message to residents participating, directing them to begin exercising their evacuation plans due to a fictitious Las Trampas wildfire burning to the south of Rossmoor.
Practicing evacuation plans
Upon receiving the CWS alert, participants began to evacuate using traffic patterns directed by Walnut Creek Police. Predetermined evacuation routes led evacuees to a temporary evacuation point at the Heather Farms Park Community Center. At the closure of the exercise, 127 Rossmoor residents evacuated their homes, effectively practicing their evacuation plans.
We train for and implement actual evacuations for various disaster scenarios"
“We train for and implement actual evacuations for various disaster scenarios in conjunction with our law enforcement partners,” said Fire Chief Lewis Broschard, Contra Costa County Fire Protection District. “However, this evacuation drill, using our new digital evacuation tool, Zonehaven, and in an area presenting numerous challenges, was especially valuable for evacuations here and across the County.” Walnut Creek Deputy City Manager Carla Hansen noted the safety of Rossmoor residents is one of the highest priorities the City of Walnut Creek has.
Temporary evacuation point
“The City of Walnut Creek began planning for this drill last year, and was thrilled to have such strong participation. We learn from each of these events, and will build upon the lessons learned to enhance our emergency response approach,” said Hansen.
Additional objectives were to educate, familiarize, and prepare the Rossmoor community to better respond to a wildfire threat while evaluating the abilities of local government and emergency response agencies to notify residents, order an evacuation, and control traffic flow in an orderly manner while directing residents either away from a wildfire threat or to a designated temporary evacuation point. The Rossmoor evacuation drill was the first large-scale use of new digital evacuation tool Zonehaven, which uses predefined zones across the entire county to identify and communicate areas to be evacuated quickly in conjunction with the CWS.
Digital evacuation tool
All residents are encouraged to sign up for CWS and get to know their zone identifier
All residents are encouraged to sign up for CWS and get to know their zone identifier, which they can quickly determine by visiting cwsalerts website. While emergency evacuations may be prompted by any number of natural or manmade disasters, the wildland fire scenario was chosen because of the increasingly dangerous hazard such fires pose in wildland-urban interface areas such as the Rossmoor community.
In addition to strengthening collaboration between all participating agencies, data was collected that will be used to improve evacuation plans across the City of Walnut Creek and the County.
Participating agencies planned the evacuation exercise over the course of several months. These agencies included the City of Walnut Creek, Con Fire, Cal Fire’s Santa Clara Unit, the Golden Rain Foundation – Rossmoor, Contra Costa Sheriff’s Office of Emergency Services, the Red Cross, CERT, and Contra Costa County Animal Services.